Inside the Security Mind: Making the Tough Decisions

Rule of the Weakest Link

Everyone knows the concept of the weakest link, and that any chain is only as strong as that stick of chewing gum binding its middle links. This old cliche has never been so true as when it is applied to technical security practices. Hackers are not going to bother running a complex, time-intensive, brute-force attack against our new, cool, triple-hashed password file if they can simply walk into the assistant's office and find the password written on a desk. Most organizations have a heavy mix of strong and weak security measures, which is often the fatal mistake that grants an eager attacker access to systems and data. ...