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The Unintended Consequence of Over-Relying on Security

Technologically, we are in a bizarre dilemma. While on one hand, manifesting security risks are prompting us to constantly tighten our security, pushing us for towards ironclad security postures, on the other hand, it is deepening our dependency on security solutions. As we layer our security in hopes of protecting our systems from being infiltrated, we are somewhere getting caught in our own webs. In extraordinary circumstances, these very strategies can become a prison for us.

Image: Sulagna Saha (c) Gestalt IT

It’s not uncommon to be locked out of one’s password vault because a user forgot the password to the vault. What if it’s not just one password, but the whole suite of it that someone ends up losing in some bizarre turn of events? How do they convince the security solution guarding the passwords to let them in?

The bottom line is, in our fight against advanced threats and prodigious attackers, we are giving in to security too much, to the point where it itself becomes the problem. Bruce Schneier, a technologist working in security reminds us of this in his blog titled- “When Security Locks You Out of Everything”. Making it more realistic with a thought experiment, he writes-

Thought experiment story of someone who lost everything in a house fire, and now can’t log into anything.

To read the whole article, check out “When Security Locks You Out of Everything” at Schneier on Security.

About the author

Sulagna Saha

Sulagna Saha is a writer at Gestalt IT where she covers all the latest in enterprise IT. She has written widely on miscellaneous topics. On gestaltit.com she writes about the hottest technologies in Cloud, AI, Security and sundry.

A writer by day and reader by night, Sulagna can be found busy with a book or browsing through a bookstore in her free time. She also likes cooking fancy things on leisurely weekends. Traveling and movies are other things high on her list of passions. Sulagna works out of the Gestalt IT office in Hudson, Ohio.