What do you do if your system design lacks security and robustness?

Actually, I disagree with the premise... The most important requirement in development is establishing the requirements before designing the system!!!

It is crucial to take corrective actions to enhance its reliability and resilience. Here are some strategies we can consider: - Document Everything: Good Documentation leads to good fixing. - Simplify the Design: Simplicity reduces complexity - Design for Fault Tolerance: Systems continues to operate correctly despite hardware or software failures. - Modular Design: Modular design enhances robustness by containing faults within specific modules. - Expect and Plan for Failure: Design the system to handle them gracefully.

Risk assessment is important to understand the security requirements of your application or architectures. This is important to include security requirements in your design or to plan mitigation of security risks. These assessments can be done on the basis of various factors such as application exposure on public internet, data sensitivity, internal business model or processes, and etc.

Usually the most common oversight is that the architect doesn´t relate to the end user that is going to operate the system and jump to the technical solution, so the risk assessment is not complete if you don´t consider the capabilities and understanding of the user. The biggest risk always is the human interaction with the system.

You need to regularly prioritise security assessment and rectification as vulnerabilities and risks are very dynamic. There are always new vulnerabilities identified and exploited. This can be on the code/library level, on transport layer, etc. Ideally, there should be regular cadence on Operational excellence topics such as security, reliability, cost optimisation, and etc. Assess, evaluate and fix regularly.

By staying vigilant with software updates, operating system patches, and hardware upgrades, potential vulnerabilities can be promptly addressed, reducing the system's susceptibility to cyber-attacks. Consistently adhering to an updated schedule is imperative for bolstering the system's resilience and ensuring its long-term security.

Ask questions before giving answers. You need to take into account the users training before designing a system. You need to take out of the equation as much human input you can from your system and make it intuitive. You should have an understanding of the users capabilities to emphasize the points they may be lacking.

Training users in incident response protocols is crucial for strengthening system security. Empowering teams with the knowledge and skills to swiftly and effectively manage security breaches or system failures is key to minimising risks and ensuring timely responses. Investing in incident response training fosters a culture of preparedness and proactive security measures.

Automated regular monitoring is essential but Alarming is more critical. Make sure you get to know the problems for both security and reliability promptly in order to fix them quickly. Self healing architectural practices should be followed to avoid disruptions.

Automate configurations that block vulnerable components of your system like a safe mode when certain alarms trigger, this can prevent you for having major issues when the alarm is not immediately attended.

- Use penetration tests and similar practices for testing your systems security posture. - Use Chaos tests and similar practices for testing your system robustness, monitoring, alarming and self healing abilities.

Setup regular Operation Excellence cadence to assess, understand and prioritise security, reliability, performance, cost and similar topics.

Setup regular Operation Excellence cadence to assess, understand and prioritise security, reliability, performance, cost and similar topics.