A catastrophic failure is always a system failure.
It could be the intern, it could be Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To Be With, or it could be those login details that you thought were secure on your help desk software. If you lose your production database, it’s not the fault of an individual, a robot or a third party.
There should be multiple points of protection between you and your data. The code should be tested, the logins should be secured, rotated, MFAd and audited, and admin access should be off by default.
It’s not another procedure on a document that no one reads or remembers; it’s a gateway that no one can forget. It’s not connecting from a developer machine; it’s a pipeline that only runs in a trusted environment after appropriate checks are made, and makes backups before making changes. It’s testing your backups.
It’s not about nottrusting your team. I trust mine, but sometimes they get tired, and sometimes they get stressed, and I want them to burn whatever cycles they have onproviding business value, not walking tightropes.
What system failure are you blocking today to save you tomorrow?
