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My needs may be entirely different than yours and I don't want to downplay the importance of security, but... Security writing in "engagement" obsessed media y

My needs may be entirely different than yours and I don't want to downplay the importance of security, but... Security writing in "engagement" obsessed media yields lots of people screaming "FIRE!" whenever seeing something even theoretically flammable, and bandwagoneers— already imagining their hair is on fire— lambasting everyone not immediately evacuating for being careless about fire safety. It reminds me of politicians being 'tough on crime'— they reflexively jump at opportunities to tighten the screws regardless of its necessity or efficacy. It's an emotional response involving self-image, peer pressure, and fashion rather than rational cost benefit analysis. Perfect is the enemy of good. Attacking every theoretical threat like an international bank's network admin yields no practical benefit for most. Not nobody but most. If this TLA is new to me, there will be another new one that people will lambast me for not knowing in a couple of years, max. For me, this problem was a better fit for the Wizard of Oz than a security education resource— what I really needed was the right frame of mind rather than learning the implementation details of every incremental certificate authority update. I evaluate my attack surfaces and reduce them if I can, evaluate the real importance of keeping what I'm protecting secret, implement standard precautions and architecture to mitigate those risks, pay attention to the systems, pay attention to new vulnerabilities, and re-evaluate upon changes. The process is technology-agnostic and only requires you deep dive into the stuff you need to know without feeling like you need a new certification ever 6 months to run your company's CalDAV server.

scottLobster 5y ago
Relevant article: How I learned to stop worrying (mostly) and love my threat model https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-mostly-and-love-my-threat-model/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/how-i...
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> evaluate the real importance of keeping what I'm protecting secret Excellent. This is often ignored by the security obsessed, those people yelling FIRE! as you say. Securing access to my cloud-hosted cat photos does not demand the same energy as securing ICBM launch codes.
kbenson 5y ago
When you start dealing with hundreds of servers or more (perhaps it starts earlier at the high tens), you start looking at all things as trade-offs, and doing so yields interesting insights that aren't necessarily obvious when you're working at smaller levels. What is the cost (in time and effort and manpower and complexity) to implement? What is the cost to maintain? What is the cost to manage, when you are adding and removing people often? What are the failure scenarios, when any one server that needs to manage things starts to become a liability for disaster recovery and redundancy purposes? Sometimes the destination is clearly better than your current place, but the road to get there has a cost all its own that makes traveling it the non-optimal choice. It's very easy for 1-3 admins to decide to implement something over 10-30 servers and keep themselves up to date and with the right access and knowledge to manage and maintain it. It's quite another thing when you're talking about hundreds of servers and you've implemented clear delineations about access and you have 10-20 admins ranging from junior to expert with associated levels of access to servers and tools, and the fleet of servers has evolved over years (or multiple decades, in some cases). Applying changes over that type of system can be complex and error prone and when it affects your ability to actually access and maintain the systems in question, it can be very hard to reason about the problems until you start encountering them. Change comes with risk, and risk assessment of technology becomes a large part of the planning requirements.

scottLobster 5y ago

Relevant article: How I learned to stop worrying (mostly) and love my threat model https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-mostly-and-love-my-threat-model/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/how-i...

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

> evaluate the real importance of keeping what I'm protecting secret Excellent. This is often ignored by the security obsessed, those people yelling FIRE! as you say. Securing access to my cloud-hosted cat photos does not demand the same energy as securing ICBM launch codes.

kbenson 5y ago

When you start dealing with hundreds of servers or more (perhaps it starts earlier at the high tens), you start looking at all things as trade-offs, and doing so yields interesting insights that aren't necessarily obvious when you're working at smaller levels. What is the cost (in time and effort and manpower and complexity) to implement? What is the cost to maintain? What is the cost to manage, when you are adding and removing people often? What are the failure scenarios, when any one server that needs to manage things starts to become a liability for disaster recovery and redundancy purposes? Sometimes the destination is clearly better than your current place, but the road to get there has a cost all its own that makes traveling it the non-optimal choice. It's very easy for 1-3 admins to decide to implement something over 10-30 servers and keep themselves up to date and with the right access and knowledge to manage and maintain it. It's quite another thing when you're talking about hundreds of servers and you've implemented clear delineations about access and you have 10-20 admins ranging from junior to expert with associated levels of access to servers and tools, and the fleet of servers has evolved over years (or multiple decades, in some cases). Applying changes over that type of system can be complex and error prone and when it affects your ability to actually access and maintain the systems in question, it can be very hard to reason about the problems until you start encountering them. Change comes with risk, and risk assessment of technology becomes a large part of the planning requirements.