The Security Mindset (2008)

I was rereading some essays a few hours ago and came across this and the essay by Ed Felten on Freedom-To-Tinker commenting on it, The Security Mindset and "Harmless Failures" (http://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/security-mindset-an...).

On of Ed Felten's points, "The second way is to think, "This looks like a harmless failure, but we should avoid it anyway. No good can come of this." The first way protects you if you're clever; the second way always protects you." Is also useful in protecting against other types of failure, not just security problems.

Fascinating stuff!

Programmers (good ones) also have a different mindset - always trying to think of all paths, not just the happy paths. But we don't expect malice, just Murphy's law.