13 security misimpressions

Fred Cohen, a person who defined term virus 20 years ago, goes on crusade against popular misconceptions about security:



  • That sounds like an ‘academic’ view


  • That’s a Socialistic View


  • We have a firewall/intrusion detection system/virus scanner that will take care of it.


  • Nobody would be interested in hacking us.


  • “IT is responsible for security” - statement by the CEO.


  • “I use my children’s names and passwords for all my passwords on all my accounts as I know the IT people make it safe”.


  • We don’t have to worry about viruses because [fill in the blank] - typically “we only use Macs”, “we only use Linux”, “we don’t use shareware”.


  • “We don’t want to establish security policies, since that would upset the employees.”


  • You consider *availability* to be a part of security?


  • Why waste money on intrusion detection? We’ve never seen a compromise or even an attack.


  • We use SSL, so our web site is secure.


  • We were certified by [PLACE NAME HERE] so we must be secure.

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