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> Well, somehow engineers and architects manage to resist management pressures in favor for security, you don't see many bridges collapsing but they have financ

> Well, somehow engineers and architects manage to resist management pressures in favor for security, you don't see many bridges collapsing but they have financial constraints too. And accountants resist management pressures to bend the accounting standard, or they go to prison too. Generally, yes, but not always. Sometimes they get boxed in by management and forced to make bad choices. When this happens, it usually leads to a spectacular failure ... and then the scapegoat is found. The most famous case is probably the Challenger space shuttle. At Texas A&M they make sure every engineering student reads the story [1] of the Morton Thiokol employees assessing whether or not it was safe to launch at such low temperatures. The engineers had solid doubts, and refused to declare it safe. The managers had pressure from every direction to get to "yes" and launch the bird already. Finally, during the teleconference the night before, one of the engineers' superiors said "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat." A new recommendation was put out (bypassing the engineers who still refused to sign off), and the next morning they got their launch like they wanted. Just over a minute later the shuttle exploded, killing the crew and putting American manned spaceflight on a multi-year hiatus. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] http://ethics.tamu.edu/Portals/3/Case%20Studies/Shuttle.pdf http://ethics.tamu.edu/Portals/3/Case%20Studies/Shuttle.pdf

cm2187 12y ago
There are always cases like this in every profession. Some dam in Italy which collapsed for a similar reason, incompetent doctors, Enron, etc. But when you go see your doctor, you do not rely on the fact that he is one of the best doctors in the US. You have no way to tell. You rely on the fact that even an average doctor is good enough to not miss something important. Well the problem with IT security as it is now, is that we see major breaches almost every week. Some were difficult to avoid but in many case it is just because of bad security design, and in some case people developers ignoring completely security. And I am sure Sony's management didn't box the developers in storing passwords in clear text.

cm2187 12y ago

There are always cases like this in every profession. Some dam in Italy which collapsed for a similar reason, incompetent doctors, Enron, etc. But when you go see your doctor, you do not rely on the fact that he is one of the best doctors in the US. You have no way to tell. You rely on the fact that even an average doctor is good enough to not miss something important. Well the problem with IT security as it is now, is that we see major breaches almost every week. Some were difficult to avoid but in many case it is just because of bad security design, and in some case people developers ignoring completely security. And I am sure Sony's management didn't box the developers in storing passwords in clear text.