Hacker News Reader

Comment by dstroot | Hacker News Reader

Came here to say this, upvoted. Both Apple and Microsoft have "corporate IT" settings that can be used to turn off "trust my device", "remember me", etc. Auditors and CISO offices tend to lean in on checklist security - in other words it doesn't matter if it's actually more secure, it only matters that it passes the checklist audit. Many of the settings are user hostile and incentivize users to work around them. Making real security worse of course...

View on HN

I’m not sure how one changes the mind of auditors who are just there for a job and who aren’t actually interested in the field? IME, the only auditors who are knowledgeable are those overseeing the folks with checklists — and they rarely seem to have the time to correct the folks they’re overseeing.

Stop paying them, I guess, and find a different audit firm that's more knowledgeable. Just like anything else—you get the level of competence you pay for. (Although I guess there's probably a "sweet spot" at which you can pay less AND get better first-level auditors if you're not looking at the biggest firms that are going to charge the most money and also have the most churn)

In a free market, you don't - you start your own company that doesn't waste half of everyone's time on security, and do stuff twice as efficiently, for half the price and outcompete the other one.

Then you get outcompeted by a company with no security at all, which is twice as efficient as you until they get hacked.

Good security, the stuff that actually stops you from getting hacked, shouldn’t be considered wasteful. And eliminating good security shouldn’t be considered an improvement in efficiency.

Ideally we should use the word “waste” to narrowly point at activities that are entirely pointless. Like requiring password rotation every 7 days.

There is no incentive to do so when the shareholders are only interested in the next quarterly earnings report.

Customers need to ask for these changes, which is why this is hard to solve. At least in my field, many of the measures we end up having to fall in line with are the result of our customers deciding that those who bid on their contracts must have these certain credentials. If those same customers had more competent decision-makers determining technical qualifications then this would be less of an issue. Unfortunately, that also means that we will be stuck with these audits in their current form until the vast majority of our customers first decide they’re not needed.

It seems like the problem here isn't the use of checklists, it's that the checklists in question contain questionable stuff like "enforce frequent reauth". Systematically checking for the presence of good things and the absence of bad things seems like a good idea both from a security and consistency perspective. Of course the trick is making sure your "good" and "bad" lists are well thought out and appropriately applied.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com