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Resource constrained organizations will almost always choose to invest their resources to get MORE resources, not protect against the chance that something bad will happen.

This is a good point but it points to something some might not like. Resource constrained warehouses might on skimp on covering the risk of fire, resource constrained restaurants might skimp on sanitation, Resource constrained power companies (PG&E) might skimp on line maintenance and let whole towns burn to the ground (Paradise, 80+ people, Berry Creek 30+ etc) and so-forth (up to every company being too "resource constrained" to pay to stop global warming). In cases of this sort, you have companies risking both their capital and the life and limb of average people.

We really have companies following this resource constrained logic and horrible things have and are happening. Economists describe this dynamic in terms of "externalities" and letting it run rampant pretty literally has in world on fire (and drowned under water, etc).

You bring up a very good point, and personally I attribute this to the tyranny of shareholder primacy. At least here in the states, nothing is going to change until there is an alternative that places shareholders at a level that is at most equal to other considerations, and more preferably below more important business considerations.

That's not how anything works. The shareholders are the ones asking the company to do a good job with the important business decisions so that the company will do well and the stock will go up. How else would it work...?

As some other comments point out, security hardening doesn't directly raise company value. It's hard to justify in the short-term.

Attitudes about it are much better now than they have ever been, but there are still a lot of folks out there that don't prioritize it.

This argument is super lazy. Businesses do tons of things which don't raise short-term value. R&D, buying insurance, hiring junior people, laying out money for reserved instances with AWS.

Guess what all of these have in common? The exact thing that security has; eliminating long-term risk. Don't blame the stock holders because your arguments didn't persuade management...

More like, the shareholders are asking the company to do whatever it takes to turn the biggest possible profit. That might mean solid business decisions, or unscrupulous externalization of costs.

There are lots of human endeavors that have zero shareholders, involve computers, and the people doing them think about security exactly 0 minutes out of the day and everyone thrives. This is to say that the opinion about how it’s the bottom line blah blah blah is probably totally wrong, and maybe the security blowhards are just talking about shit that is irrelevant like 99% of the time.

And then you have huge corporations with zillions of dollars passing through their systems, employing hundreds or thousands of people, and storing terabytes of mission-critical data, who treat the people who try to help them make wise IT decisions like mindless code-monkeys who don't know anything, despite having been ostensibly hired for their expertise on the topic.

Stop blaming the victims. If every corporation had to enforce their own physical security with a private army to prevent theft or killing of their employees, then no business could be a going concern.

We have a social contract where businesses just need to put forth some minimum effort (door locks, alarm) and police and the military do the rest.

We need to enforce this social contract online and against global criminals now. If the criminals are in a state that harbors them, use 10x retaliation to that state to give them an incentive to fix the problem. Dictators don't respect anything but force.

Yeah, I've come to realize we don't have any "social contracts" on this planet. We have a planetary cancer called "humanity" that barely manages to cooperate even in their common desire for destruction of everything good in the universe.

And yet we mitigated y2k. All with publicly traded companies. The reward was simply being open for business on 1/1/2001 without slipping a beat.

Sometimes I think as an industry we hyped too much and over delivered giving the impression that it was no big deal.

The difference is that we knew that the Y2K bug was coming. It was a given that we were going to end up reaching 1/1/2000. Here, it's not a given that backups will ever need to be touched.

Spending a lot of money to fix something that is known will happen is easy to justify. If you don't do it, you will end up losing significant amounts of money.

For something that isn't guaranteed to happen, it's harder to justify putting a lot of money into it. What is the value of doing thorough testing of backups if they're never actually accessed? One could argue that it's purely a waste of money.

"One could argue that it's purely a waste of money. "

A counterargument would be just any of the frequent news articles about company X having to pay Y millions or lost such and such money.

* 1/1/2000

Actually 3 dates, that was one. 2000 was a leap year and lots of systems got that wrong. 9/9/1999 was sometimes used as a can't happen date as well.

Your point of mixing security risks with fire, sanity or environmental risks is interesting.

Those externalities are historically managed by regulation and laws so they are equal rules for every company : you are not theoretically in competition with companies that don’t protect themselves against fire because it’s mandatory to do so (in many countries).

Maybe we should start to make companies responsible for not somehow mitigating the risk of being attacked. It makes even more sense when customer privacy is concerned. I know GDPR started in that direction though.

>you are not theoretically in competition with companies that don’t protect themselves against fire because it’s mandatory to do so (in many countries).

But in practice you can be. Companies can get away with not following regulations for a long time. This isn't all too uncommon in the restaurant business.

Regulations need to be cheap and easy to follow. Otherwise they'll be skirted here and there. Yes, businesses will get in trouble for not following them, but if enforcement isn't on top of most of the violations then you'll just create a system where everyone ends up skirting the rules.

I do agree with your point. However, I feel like regulations & norms tends to work over time.

If security became a mandatory thing, single actors will of course be slow to invest, but the industry by itself will adapt by easing the adaptation to regulation.

For example, in fire safety, it’s now harder to build a non fireproof building because nobody will build that since building technics are now fully integrating this issue.

Your local web agency may not do a lot more effort to backup its data due to regulation, but you can imagine that its hosting provider would be able to provide a cheap and friendly backup solution thanks to this becoming mandatory.

It’s just my thoughts.

This is very true! And that's part of what I was going for - if it's cheap enough then people will use them.

To the first point... some stores do. Hell, even fast-food restaurants in some big cities hire armed guards to keep the peace. Have you ever seen a McDonald's with armed security? I have.

And in any case the threat surface is way different. If I hold up the local Best Buy at gunpoint I'm not walking out with their entire customer roll. But if I hack their POS, there's a pretty good chance that I am.

> If they don't want to hire hardcore commandos to protect their property, maybe they deserve to get robbed/looted?

In places where there is sufficient law enforcement, this is not required but even then some extra-high-risk shops like banks still do. In places where there is not sufficient law enforcement, like failed states, favelas and the internet, almost all shops should hire guards (or their digital equivalent) or risk being robbed. In this particular case, the long term fix is to extend the rule of law onto the internet but until that time having good security is not optional.

> 2a. If a $2m ransomware attack hits your organization every 5 years, and it would cost you $1m/year in talent & resources to harden against this, you SHOULD let it happen because it's cheaper. Just patch the vulnerability each time it happens and try to stretch the next ransomeware attack to more than 5 years away.

No, that's just brain cancer banks board directors can opt for.

You simply skipped over customers data bying lost. Oh, insurance give you the money, court settlements will be payed, it's cheap ! For you.

And by not having that "talent & resources" you streach your own business beyound sanity. Like that "new telecoms" breed that do not own any cables or antennas. Just marketing, H&R and finances. And lacking any competence (becouse no infra, what they could possibly do ? :> ) call center. And then they outsorce their finance. And they go down or sell themselves when zefir blows...

Your thinking style promotes egg shell type of business. But it's cheap !

I would consider these irrational reasons.

1. Yea if you don't lock your store you will get robbed and be held liable for the loss, your insurance won't pay out because you didn't sufficiently protect your liabilities.

2. Businesses buy insurance and secure their equipment because they are held liable for this, the cost is included in the cost of the product.

2a. If a ransomware attack hits your organisation it will destroy your reputation because customers will notice that you don't take their protection seriously, they will leave for a more expensive but reliable product that takes their business and clients seriously and actively works to protect them.

I get your arguments they just don't make much sense from the perspective of a business and its liabilities.

"If a ransomware attack hits your organisation it will destroy your reputation because customers will notice that you don't take their protection seriously, they will leave for a more expensive but reliable product that takes their business and clients seriously and actively works to protect them."

In many cases, you cannot really switch.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-northern-rails-self-ser...

Ransomware just hit ticket machines on a UK railway. I do not think that this will make people who regularly take that railway seek for alternatives.

I think buying insurance would be a better analog to having good backups. You save some money by not buying insurance, just like when you skimp on IT infra. Warehouse fires / ransomware gangs will cost more if they happen, but if they don't you came out ahead (I guess).

I think having working backups is closer to locking your store and having security cameras than it is to hiring a team of soldiers.

"If a $2m ransomware attack hits your organization every 5 years"

The question is - how do you know that it is going to hit you every 5 years?

This isn't a completely random event. If you build up a reputation of being a soft target, other hackers will try to dip their beaks, too. And there is a lot of them out there.

Paying even one Danegeld attracts more Vikings to your shore.

> they don't want to hire hardcore commandos to protect their property

Brick and mortar stores don't need hardcore commandos. The recent surge in ransomware is actually a good thing as people slowly start to care about the obvious: that if they build their business on something that has a weak link, breaking this link will compromise their business, so it's their job to make sure it never happens.

This means asking awkward questions to people who are in charge of your IT infrastructure, whether in house or outsourced. What happens if this computer room is set on fire? What is our strategy of dealing with ransomware attacks? How long it will take to rebuild the systems after they are compromised? These are valid questions to ask as a business owner, and if you don't know the answer to them, you are to blame when the worst happens.

On Point 1....Yes; and besides that most Brick and mortar stores have insurance for catastrophic loss...so essentially they have a working backup.

And most physical items in a store can easily be replaced. If a criminal is holding your shop ransom, it's not for intellectual property.

> (My point is that incompetence doesn't make it morally ok that a criminal thing happens to someone)

There is negligence, however. If you leave the door wide open and unsupervised and something gets stolen your insurance company will be much less understanding. That does not say anything about how theft is "morally okay", just that negligence is not okay.