Posted by js4ever 19 hours ago
Security is a perception, but right now it seems like it needs good PR.
And sure, you can encrypt at rest, and perhaps even enforce that only re-encrypted versions are ever seen by the management/API web server. But fundamentally this display requirement means that if your management/API web server is compromised, users' secrets can be obtained by a process of impersonation.
As costs and broader economic impact and perhaps even injuries/deaths related to software breaches continue to grow, there will be growing intolerace for vulnerable software, just as there was intolerance for collapsing bridges and buildings.
And I'd also at some point expect something like a "building code" that applies to software that will be exposed to the public.
If anything, AI makes running linux boxes much easier than 4 years ago; it's now faster and the learning cliff is gone to get the correct CLI commands and digging into system logs.
As you build something bigger and bigger, quickly, with several people building, guarding all the doors becomes exceptionally difficult without a kind of aggressive discipline which is contrary to the "go fast" culture.
Cybersecurity in practice until now, for most companies, has been an insurance problem, not a quality problem.
Such companies are quickly discovering that insurance is a post-hoc partial correction and not a proper solution.
This situation will not improve anytime soon for most companies.
The solution does not require any new magical tools.
(or things will stay messy because people will throw AI at the problems instead of hiring real security professionals)
The sky isn't falling.
Run agents and everything they build. Secure execution from the first sandbox
1. Ask them about what percentage of their own resources goes towards cybersecurity, audits etc. Would they even tell you.
2. Technical stack maturity. If the details are available, because they won't reveal any of it to you.
3. Other signals: Do they give talks on platform security, who is incharge of their cyber security.
Yes:
* you do ask about things like budget allocation, audits, and internal compliance processes.
* you do ask about the tech stack, how it is maintained, and what the patch and disclosure policies and SLOs are
No:
*you do not rely on what figureheads say publicly; none of that is binding in the way legal agreements are
And if you're a vendor, your deals desk probably has all of these answers packaged up and ready to go; or even published on a website like this https://spyglass.trustshare.com/home (no idea who that is, it's a random company's compliance portal I found while googling my employers compliance portal provider).
[edited for formatting]