Those of us in security are very much like heart doctors -- cardiologists. Our patients know that lack of exercise, too much dietary fat, and smoking are all bad for them. But they will continue to smoke, and eat fried foods, and practice being couch potatoes until they have their infarction. Then they want a magic pill to make them better all at once, without the effort. And by the way, they claim loudly that their condition really isn't their fault -- it was genetics, or the tobacco companies, or McDonalds that was to blame. And they blame us for not taking better care of them. Does this sound familiar?

But it doesn't have to be this way. We can do things better. We need to stop doing business as usual and start focusing on end-to-end quality. Security needs to be built in from the start -- not slapped on after the fact. — Gene Spafford, at the 23rd National Information Systems Security Conference in October 2000