The Complete Guide to Defense in Depth

Preface

Let’s start with a question. In the face of modern adversaries, can a system be deemed secure if it uses the latest technology at the edge? Fundamentally, there are a couple of issues in this question. First, there are no “perfectly” safe systems, only safer ones. Second, security is not about protecting the perimeters anymore; attackers are looking for gaps in our design from all directions.

Defense in Depth is a security design principle that layers security controls to protect, acknowledges the inevitability of failures, and focuses on resilience to create a formidable barrier against the modern threat landscape. Recent attacks such as the SolarWinds attack taught us that protecting the interfaces of a system is not enough; security ...