Security Maxims to Live By

I happened across the Vulnerability Assessment Team website of the Argonne National Laboratory. The Security Manager there has a great sense of humor, and has devised some security maxims much like my Rules of Thumb only BETTER.

Here’s a couple of my favorites:

Big Heads Maxim: The farther up the chain of command a (non-security) manager can be found, the more likely he or she thinks that (1) they understand security and (2) security is easy.

Plug into the Formula Maxim: Engineers don’t understand security. They tend to work in solution space, not problem space. They rely on conventional designs and focus on a good experience for the user and manufacturer, rather than a bad experience for the bad guy. They view nature as the adversary, not people, and instinctively think about systems failing stochastically, rather than due to deliberate, intelligent, malicious intent.
I would add “Software Programmers” to this one.

We’ll Worry About it Later Maxim: Effective security is difficult enough when you design it in from first principles. It almost never works to retrofit it in, or to slap security on at the last minute, especially onto inventory technology.

Head on over and check out the rest.