Strategic Security Neepery

Now that I’m retired, I try hard not to be the guy who stands in the back of the room and shouts “You kids get offa my lawn!” but I have to admit that I often feel that computer security (as a field, in general) has gone horribly out of control and is thumping through the rough terrain and weeds while the driver, who lacks vision, keeps grasping for simple solutions to what is really a complex problem involving strategy, economics, and skepticism.

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The Elephant In The Connected Room

Computer security is a new(ish) field, so we get to make up names for things. That’s an advantage and a disadvantage – it means that marketing people can come up with new-sounding names for old stuff, and sometimes customers get all excited and buy it because it sounds so new!

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A Good Resource

Internet security is complicated and there are lots of dependencies – usually if you ask an internet security practitioner “is ${this thing} safe?” they’ll tell you “if you’re trying to do ${this} or ${that} then…” and carry on for a half an hour in that vein.

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