When Rich Pethia recently asked a large military audience whether the Internet was essential to conducting their daily work, practically everyone raised a hand. But when he asked how many of the attendee's top managers had given advance approval for the stampede to the Net, no hands went up. We've become dependent without making a conscious decision and evaluating the risk as we normally would. The Net is basically doubling every 10 or 12 months. We don't even know where the end points are.
Traditional security depends on closed systems and tight administration.
We've walked away from what we know how to do. Now we have to build trustworthy systems from untrustworthy components. Current security is like a cookie with a hard, crusty outside and a soft, chewy center. Pethia likened survivable systems to highways and bridges, which are built of vulnerable materials but are relatively trustworthy infrastructures. Future survivable systems will exhibit diversity, redundancy, deep-down trust validation, risk management and good contingency planning, he said.