5 ms·
> In my ideal world, companies would say "We maintain a state of the art security system [...] it is one of the most important things we work on and we spend a
by Springtime 2y ago
> In my ideal world, companies would say "We maintain a state of the art security system [...] it is one of the most important things we work on and we spend a large amount of our effort on it."
Tbh as a consumer I'd rather a company not just give self-appraisals of security in the form of overt marketing lines but let pen tests, post-mortem analyses and such speak to their robustness/lessons they've learned. Marketing is virtually always that security is top notch regardless of realities so it's hard not to be skeptical of ordinary spiels.
It's like third-party VPN services. It's all well and good to market security but when they get breached/raided/etc and it turns out they don't hold up to the claims then it just increases one's cynicism. At least those like Mullvad from everything I've seen match their statements (no affiliation, nor do I even use it, just useful for this example).
Ed Catmull of Pixar once brought up in a talk, referring to cliched lines like "Story is the most important thing" despite various productions' output being mediocre in that regard, that once an important idea can be encapsulated into a concise statement that the statement per se can be used without fear of changing behavior. Could be said for a lot of marketing.
- vaylian 2y ago> but let pen tests, post-mortem analyses and such speak to their robustness/lessons they've learned. It depends on which audience you want to reach when you want to advertise how secure your product/service is. Most people outside IT security have no idea what a penetration test is nor can they make sense of jargon-heavy post-mortems.
- Springtime 2y agoThey can put such things in a company blog for those who are looking for it, it doesn't have to be on the front page. Google, Cloudflare, the previously mentioned Mullvad, etc take this approach (and they often wind up submitted to the relevant audiences). This strengthens their brand trust in terms of security among key groups.
- JohnFen 2y agoI agree entirely. > I'd rather a company not just give self-appraisals of security Companies routinely lie right to your face. No company's self-appraisal about anything is worth paying any attention to.