A defence in depth uses multi-layered protections, similar to redundant protections, to create a reliable system despite any one layer's unreliability.
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Transcription
Cyber security is a unique challenge today because one, we are so utterly dependent upon our digital communications and our digital control of things and so it's going to become ever more essential that we have the ability to provide security that we're confident in. The challenge is if we were against Doctor No or Mr. Big in a cave somewhere and they got a bunch of people working, you could understand the threat and you could sort of limit the threat and the threat would have a predictable limitation in what they could do. They'd have to pick an avenue of approach and they'd have to go at that avenue of approach because they can't do all things at all times. The problem with the cyber security, that's not the threat. There are some entities like that. There are some state-sponsored entities that are focused on certain things, but the barrier to entry into the cyber world is very low. You can get in your basement in your boxers shorts and you can have a computer and you can get into the game. And it's sort of the idea of 10,000 monkeys typing on 10,000 keyboards, somebody is going to create a cyber security challenge. And it's constantly morphing and adapting, whereas the cyber security requirement is to protect things so you essentially have to protect everything that you value all the time. The people who want to attack that can attack at their choosing wherever they want and constantly change their attacks. Constantly just like water goes against a dam, it just goes until it finds the weakest point. At some point something happens, technology changes, human error, technological glitch or whatever. There's a good likelihood that they'll get in. And so, if you think about the cyber security problem the first thing I don't think will work is the Maginot Line. The Maginot Line was created by the French in the 1930s to prevent the Germans from doing a repeat of the first World War and invading France from Germany. People think of it now as the stupidest thing ever built, but it's not really correct because the Maginot Line actually worked. The Germans did not invade across the German/French border. Now, the fact is they went through Belgium. They still got into France and conquered France in the summer of 1940. So I think the lesson to be learned is there has to be defensive things set up as best we can for cyber security, but it's going to have to be this constantly adapting, constantly morphing, defense in depth, with some offense too, with going out and figuring out where the threats are arising. And that defense in depth means that you can't have one line. The government can't put a big wall up and everybody hides behind it, nor do we want each organization, each commercial firm or government organization to be an island onto themselves just hoping that they're not the weakest wildebeest in the herd and that the lions will get somebody else. What we really need is all those entities to be linked so that they constantly learn from one another. If one suffers a breach everyone has to learn from it. Right now the challenge is people are loath to share that information. One, because commercially they might be hurt by reputation, also they're afraid the more you share the more you have the possibility of your little island is not completely separated. Your moat around it has got linkages across it and you can be opened up more. But we're going to have to get a network to defense where every time something happens, and we learn from it, the entire network learns immediately. We're going to have to have that kind of speed because there will be breaches. There will be mistakes. But the organisms have got to learn. It's going to have to be a lot like the human immune system. The human immune system is extraordinary because about 10,000 times a day it gets attacked by something that could hurt the human body. But as it responds and it sends out antibodies to it, it does it and it learns from that. And so if it has a breach one time it actually builds up antibodies against that challenge and has them at the ready for the next time. That's how we build up immunity to things. And I think the human immune system is the way our cyber defense is going to have to be, which means it has to be integrated.
Examples
The term defence in depth is now used in many non-military contexts.
Fire prevention
A defence in depth strategy to fire prevention does not focus all the resources only on the prevention of a fire; instead, it also requires the deployment of fire alarms, extinguishers, evacuation plans, mobile rescue and fire-fighting equipment and even nationwide plans for deploying massive resources to a major blaze.[citation needed]
Defense-in-depth is incorporated into fire protection regulations for nuclear power plants. It requires preventing fires, detecting and extinguishing fires that do occur, and ensuring the capability to safely shutdown.[1]
Engineering
Defence in depth may mean engineering which emphasizes redundancy – a system that keeps working when a component fails – over attempts to design components that will not fail in the first place. For example, an aircraft with four engines will be less likely to suffer total engine failure than a single-engined aircraft no matter how much effort goes into making the single engine reliable. Charles Perrow, author of Normal accidents, wrote that sometimes redundancies backfire and produce less, not more reliability. This may happen in three ways: First, redundant safety devices result in a more complex system, more prone to errors and accidents. Second, redundancy may lead to shirking of responsibility among workers. Third, redundancy may lead to increased production pressures, resulting in a system that operates at higher speeds, but less safely.[2]
Nuclear
In nuclear engineering and nuclear safety, all safety activities, whether organizational, behavioural or equipment related, are subject to layers of overlapping provisions, so that if a failure should occur it would be compensated for or corrected without causing harm to individuals or the public at large. Defence in depth consists in a hierarchical deployment of different levels of equipment and procedures in order to maintain the effectiveness of physical barriers placed between radioactive materials and workers, the public or the environment, in normal operation, anticipated operational occurrences and, for some barriers, in accidents at the plant. Defence in depth is implemented through design and operation to provide a graded protection against a wide variety of transients, incidents and accidents, including equipment failures and human errors within the plant and events initiated outside the plan.[3]
Existential risk mitigation
Defense in depth is a useful framework for categorizing existential risk mitigation measures into three layers of defense:[4]
- Prevention: Reducing the probability of a catastrophe occurring in the first place. Example: Measures to prevent outbreaks of new highly-infectious diseases.
- Response: Preventing the scaling of a catastrophe to the global level. Example: Measures to prevent escalation of a small-scale nuclear exchange into an all-out nuclear war.
- Resilience: Increasing humanity's resilience (against extinction) when faced with global catastrophes. Example: Measures to increase food security during a nuclear winter.
Human extinction is most likely when all three defenses are weak, that is, "by risks we are unlikely to prevent, unlikely to successfully respond to, and unlikely to be resilient against".[4]
Information security
Likewise, in information security / Information Assurance defence in depth represents the use of multiple computer security techniques to help mitigate the risk of one component of the defence being compromised or circumvented. An example could be anti-virus software installed on individual workstations when there is already virus protection on the firewalls and servers within the same environment. Different security products from multiple vendors may be deployed to defend different potential vectors within the network, helping prevent a shortfall in any one defence leading to a wider failure; also known as a "layered approach".[citation needed]
See also
References
- ^ NRC: 10 CFR Appendix R to Part 50—Fire Protection Program for Nuclear Power Facilities Operating Prior to January 1, 1979
- ^ Scott D. Sagan (March 2004). "Learning from Normal Accidents" (PDF). Organization & Environment. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2004-07-14.
- ^ International Nuclear Energy Agency (1996). Defence in depth in nuclear safety (INSAG-10) (PDF). ISBN 92-0-103295-1.
- ^ a b Cotton-Barratt, Owen; Daniel, Max; Sandberg, Anders (2020). "Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter". Global Policy. 11 (3): 271–282. doi:10.1111/1758-5899.12786. ISSN 1758-5899. PMC 7228299. PMID 32427180.
This page was last edited on 19 July 2023, at 13:24