5 ms·

Unfortunately many companies charge extra for security where security should be the default. Truth to be told there some some situations where extra security co

by _pdp_ 2y ago

Unfortunately many companies charge extra for security where security should be the default. Truth to be told there some some situations where extra security costs could be justified but there are not many if charge is necessary it should be considered as a temporary measure. My $0.02.

thelittleone 2y ago
Including the recent trend of access to SOC2 reports requiring an "Enterprise" tier subscription.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  In fact I like the change. This allows them to make almost everything free of charge to individual/small companies, but could fund it from revenue of larger organization, who generally don't have problem paying.
  - ensignavenger 2y ago
    I don't mind them requiring a paid tier to get the detailed compliance level reports, but requiring the most uber expensive "call us" plan is probably too much for many smaller companies that might still benefit from easier SOC2 complaince.
  - lsaferite 2y ago
    And what of small companies that need things like SOC2 reports from vendors? If you want to work with large companies, being SOC certified makes it easier. Part of that is ensuring your vendors are also compliant with good standards and that's best done with SOC reports.
    - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
      Getting SOC 2 compliance alone takes ~10k USD apart from vendor reports. Yes they may be small with employee count, but when I said small I just meant someone running something for small set of users for free or close to free. Not someone working with other enterprises.
      - lsaferite 2y ago
        My point is that even small companies may need SOC reports from their vendors but still not be able to financially support enterprise level plans with every one of them. By being supportive of hiding those reports behind enterprise level contracts you are effectively supporting pricing those companies out and potentially making them unable to work with larger clients.
        YetAnotherNick 2y ago
        SOC reports are only needed for SOC compliance and compliance costs 10k USD. It depends on the subscription cost, but if the company could afford the compliance they could afford extra 100 USD/month. No one expects small companies to pay few 1000 dollars per month. Although few companies have minimum ticket size for enterprise clients and that is a bad thing IMO.
- julesvr 2y ago
  I have the same problem at the moment with Supabase. We're a startup trying to get ISO 27001 certified and need to upload Supabase's SOC2 report to Vanta, but we can't because we're on the Pro tier and they don't give access to that, even after emailing them. It's ridiculous.
  - christinac 2y ago
    (I work at/started Vanta. Email support@vanta.com and they should be able to give you guidance and help out. If that doesn't work, email me -- christina at vanta)
  - _pdp_ 2y ago
    It is even more ridiculous because it costs them nothing to issue an extra copy of this pdf report. They need to certify anyway because their enterprise customers will demand it.
- eknkc 2y ago
  We got a SOC2 cert in our bootstrapped small saas company. Then we hid the report behind Enterprise subscriptions because it takes too much time, effort and money to obtain and maintain it. We did not get certified because we wanted it, we did because the enterprise scale customers forced us to. Due to their internal bureaucracy.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  Or worse, "SSO" as an Enterprise feature. You're a 2-3 person startup, you set up GSuite, you want to set things up right, oh, "$Call us" for a tier with SSO. Nope, I guess disparate users for now. Not the worst in the world to be clear, but an entirely arbitrary gate, in my experience.
  - d0gsg0w00f 2y ago
    Yeah, the SSO gates are common and borderline criminal. "The only way you can use our software is insecurely"
    - thelittleone 2y ago
      I have long held that view also, although the post below about the cost of supporting SSO was interesting. Unlike withholding SOC2 reports which cost nothing to incremental to give to your lowest tier, SSO may increase the cost of support. I wonder how it would go offering SSO as an addon to entry level tiers that covers the incremental support cost. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41304228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41304228 This SSO cost post is also interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752518
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
originalvichy 2y ago
I think it's fair to say most security is built-in by your average developer. However, the security side of things needs efforts from a far smaller pool of experts that can make your tool as secure as is possible. I don't imagine it is as cheap to find feature developers as well as security experts or security developers. Practically speaking, cheaping out on security might cost you the reputation of the app, so doing it well will be expensive but worth it, but might never be worth it if you offer everything by default but in the end only a fraction of your customer base uses the features.
willcipriano 2y ago
[flagged]
- batch12 2y ago
  Software should be secure by default. No defense of honor is necessary. > This line of thinking has lead to many foreign wars of choice, where we send young men to die and our nation recieved nothing in exchange. "It was the right thing to do" is uttered by those who did nothing I am not able to find any references to the war of regression or the battle of cve-2021-44228, so I'll have to call nonsense on this one.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    Why? What was paid that now this is owed?
    - batch12 2y ago
      We've become too accepting of trivial bugs and logic issues that could have been identified through proper quality controls.
      - willcipriano 2y ago
        You should protest. Demand your money back.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- nijave 2y ago
  Security is a basic non functional requirement for all software.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    Then don't use it? It's non-functional right? I don't get where the complaints come in. Side note: Security in these discussions is often something more like "It works with my single sign on system" or "It lets me check this box on my audit form". Security doesn't only have to happen at the app layer and it's completely doable to isolate any software in a way that is is secure despite itself. So it's less security and more convenient security that is being demanded for free most often by people who offer nothing for free themselves. The entitlement is really extreme.
cduzz 2y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "security" in this context. Identity management, role based access control, useful audit logs; all "enterprise" features, probably are very expensive to implement, and make for obvious "up-charge" product segmentation. I suspect there's some combination of "the community doesn't add useful implementations of these features" and "we can't possibly risk our reputation based on some community contribution" and "we can use this to segment our product to sell to some and give it away to some." This set of features seems to always get put in the "enterprise, only for licensed / supported customers" and it stinks.... I can understand why, though, and none of these are strictly speaking "security" as much as "compliance"
- fieldcny 2y ago
  Using your yardstick, we wouldn’t have any open source software, everything costs time to implement, that’s the point of open source, we donate time to the collective community. All those security features are not enterprise specific, they are rudimentary for any modern open source product
  - cduzz 2y ago
    I'm saying that companies that opensource their products tend to distinguish "enterprise" and non-enterprise based on things like RBAC and audit mechanisms, neither of which is "security" as much as "compliance". The original license owner, if a commercial enterprise trying to sell the product alongside the "open" version, has less incentive to accept those features from the community as it would reduce their sales of the enterprise version of the same thing, and may not align with their long-term product roadmap. In open source, the team managing a codebase isn't under any obligation to accept contributions the community and you are welcome to fork the project, if you like.
    - ang_cire 2y ago
      RBAC is absolutely a practical security control, even for non-commercial users. Least necessary privilege is not a checkbox, it will 100% save your butt in a breach by limiting blast radius.

by _pdp_ 2y ago

thelittleone 2y ago

Including the recent trend of access to SOC2 reports requiring an "Enterprise" tier subscription.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
YetAnotherNick 2y ago
In fact I like the change. This allows them to make almost everything free of charge to individual/small companies, but could fund it from revenue of larger organization, who generally don't have problem paying.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  I don't mind them requiring a paid tier to get the detailed compliance level reports, but requiring the most uber expensive "call us" plan is probably too much for many smaller companies that might still benefit from easier SOC2 complaince.
- lsaferite 2y ago
  And what of small companies that need things like SOC2 reports from vendors? If you want to work with large companies, being SOC certified makes it easier. Part of that is ensuring your vendors are also compliant with good standards and that's best done with SOC reports.
  - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
    Getting SOC 2 compliance alone takes ~10k USD apart from vendor reports. Yes they may be small with employee count, but when I said small I just meant someone running something for small set of users for free or close to free. Not someone working with other enterprises.
    - lsaferite 2y ago
      My point is that even small companies may need SOC reports from their vendors but still not be able to financially support enterprise level plans with every one of them. By being supportive of hiding those reports behind enterprise level contracts you are effectively supporting pricing those companies out and potentially making them unable to work with larger clients.
      - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
        SOC reports are only needed for SOC compliance and compliance costs 10k USD. It depends on the subscription cost, but if the company could afford the compliance they could afford extra 100 USD/month. No one expects small companies to pay few 1000 dollars per month. Although few companies have minimum ticket size for enterprise clients and that is a bad thing IMO.
julesvr 2y ago
I have the same problem at the moment with Supabase. We're a startup trying to get ISO 27001 certified and need to upload Supabase's SOC2 report to Vanta, but we can't because we're on the Pro tier and they don't give access to that, even after emailing them. It's ridiculous.
- christinac 2y ago
  (I work at/started Vanta. Email support@vanta.com and they should be able to give you guidance and help out. If that doesn't work, email me -- christina at vanta)
- _pdp_ 2y ago
  It is even more ridiculous because it costs them nothing to issue an extra copy of this pdf report. They need to certify anyway because their enterprise customers will demand it.
eknkc 2y ago
We got a SOC2 cert in our bootstrapped small saas company. Then we hid the report behind Enterprise subscriptions because it takes too much time, effort and money to obtain and maintain it. We did not get certified because we wanted it, we did because the enterprise scale customers forced us to. Due to their internal bureaucracy.
FireBeyond 2y ago
Or worse, "SSO" as an Enterprise feature. You're a 2-3 person startup, you set up GSuite, you want to set things up right, oh, "$Call us" for a tier with SSO. Nope, I guess disparate users for now. Not the worst in the world to be clear, but an entirely arbitrary gate, in my experience.
- d0gsg0w00f 2y ago
  Yeah, the SSO gates are common and borderline criminal. "The only way you can use our software is insecurely"
  - thelittleone 2y ago
    I have long held that view also, although the post below about the cost of supporting SSO was interesting. Unlike withholding SOC2 reports which cost nothing to incremental to give to your lowest tier, SSO may increase the cost of support. I wonder how it would go offering SSO as an addon to entry level tiers that covers the incremental support cost. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41304228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41304228 This SSO cost post is also interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752518
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

originalvichy 2y ago

I think it's fair to say most security is built-in by your average developer. However, the security side of things needs efforts from a far smaller pool of experts that can make your tool as secure as is possible. I don't imagine it is as cheap to find feature developers as well as security experts or security developers. Practically speaking, cheaping out on security might cost you the reputation of the app, so doing it well will be expensive but worth it, but might never be worth it if you offer everything by default but in the end only a fraction of your customer base uses the features.

willcipriano 2y ago

[flagged]

batch12 2y ago
Software should be secure by default. No defense of honor is necessary. > This line of thinking has lead to many foreign wars of choice, where we send young men to die and our nation recieved nothing in exchange. "It was the right thing to do" is uttered by those who did nothing I am not able to find any references to the war of regression or the battle of cve-2021-44228, so I'll have to call nonsense on this one.
- willcipriano 2y ago
  Why? What was paid that now this is owed?
  - batch12 2y ago
    We've become too accepting of trivial bugs and logic issues that could have been identified through proper quality controls.
    - willcipriano 2y ago
      You should protest. Demand your money back.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
nijave 2y ago
Security is a basic non functional requirement for all software.
- willcipriano 2y ago
  Then don't use it? It's non-functional right? I don't get where the complaints come in. Side note: Security in these discussions is often something more like "It works with my single sign on system" or "It lets me check this box on my audit form". Security doesn't only have to happen at the app layer and it's completely doable to isolate any software in a way that is is secure despite itself. So it's less security and more convenient security that is being demanded for free most often by people who offer nothing for free themselves. The entitlement is really extreme.

cduzz 2y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "security" in this context. Identity management, role based access control, useful audit logs; all "enterprise" features, probably are very expensive to implement, and make for obvious "up-charge" product segmentation. I suspect there's some combination of "the community doesn't add useful implementations of these features" and "we can't possibly risk our reputation based on some community contribution" and "we can use this to segment our product to sell to some and give it away to some." This set of features seems to always get put in the "enterprise, only for licensed / supported customers" and it stinks.... I can understand why, though, and none of these are strictly speaking "security" as much as "compliance"

fieldcny 2y ago
Using your yardstick, we wouldn’t have any open source software, everything costs time to implement, that’s the point of open source, we donate time to the collective community. All those security features are not enterprise specific, they are rudimentary for any modern open source product
- cduzz 2y ago
  I'm saying that companies that opensource their products tend to distinguish "enterprise" and non-enterprise based on things like RBAC and audit mechanisms, neither of which is "security" as much as "compliance". The original license owner, if a commercial enterprise trying to sell the product alongside the "open" version, has less incentive to accept those features from the community as it would reduce their sales of the enterprise version of the same thing, and may not align with their long-term product roadmap. In open source, the team managing a codebase isn't under any obligation to accept contributions the community and you are welcome to fork the project, if you like.
  - ang_cire 2y ago
    RBAC is absolutely a practical security control, even for non-commercial users. Least necessary privilege is not a checkbox, it will 100% save your butt in a breach by limiting blast radius.