Fundamental Security Design Principles Quiz

Fundamental Security Design Principles

• The principles provide a framework for creating secure systems and help designers and developers think about security throughout the design process.

Economy of Mechanism

• Definition: Systems should be designed to be as simple and small as possible.
• Benefit: Simplicity helps ensure fewer opportunities for security flaws and makes it easier to test and verify security properties.
• Examples: Prefer fewer lines of code or less complex protocols in software, and fewer physical points of entry that need to be secured in hardware.

Fail-Safe Defaults

• Definition: The default state of a system, in the event of failure, should be secure.
• Benefit: In case of a system failure, the system remains secure and does not accidentally expose resources to unauthorized users.

Least Privilege

• Definition: Users and systems should only have the minimum levels of access necessary to perform their tasks.
• Benefit: Minimizes potential damage from accidents or malicious actions by limiting access rights for users.
• Examples: A database user account that can only read data, not write, if its purpose is to generate reports.

Least Common Mechanism

• Definition: Minimize the amount of functions/mechanisms shared by different users, providing mutual security.
• Benefit: Reduces the chance of a breach in one user affecting all users.
• Examples: Individual user sessions in an operating system as opposed to a shared session.

Psychological Acceptability

• Definition: Security mechanisms should not make the resource more difficult to access in the interest of security than if the mechanisms were not present.
• Benefit: If security mechanisms are too restrictive or cumbersome, users may attempt to bypass them, leading to greater risk.
• Examples: Usable security like single sign-on, which reduces the number of times a user must enter their credentials.

Isolation

• Definition: Components of a system are isolated from one another, with interactions only occurring through defined methods.
• Benefit: Isolation contains faults or security breaches within the compromised component, preventing them from spreading.
• Examples: Virtual machines that are isolated from each other, even though they run on the same physical host.