When companies focus too much on risk

When we think about security in the context of DevSecOps, an important mantra is that we need to move from thinking about providing absolute security to thinking about managing risk in the context of business outcomes. Move from “Just say no” to saying yes to small risks if the tradeoffs appear to be worth it.

Let me illustrate this principle (in addition to a couple of other things) with an example that’s not drawn from the IT world. 

Right before the holidays, I took a last minute quick trip to speak at and attend a couple of events being held next to the airport outside San Francisco. Loaded the bags up and off I went. As I was being dropped off at the airport, I pull out my driver’s license so I won’t be fumbling around with my wallet, get out of the car, and head into the terminal.

Somehow, in the course of 50 feet, space aliens made off with my license. Call the limo company. Driver takes a look. No luck. I still have absolutely no idea what happened. 

Now, normally, frequent traveler me has a travel folio with passport, spare credit cards, cash, and other potentially useful travel backups. But because this was just a quick trip I figured I didn’t need it.

Lesson #1: You may not think you need a backup. Until you do.

(See also. It’s just a small code change. We don’t need to re-run the test suite.)

Crap. Visions of my trip mashed up with mushroom clouds seemed appropriate. But I wandered over to the security line anyway.

Much to my surprise, my missing license turned out not to be a particularly serious problem. Yes, I had other ID although nothing government issued. I had my boarding pass on my phone. I have TSA Pre. And they gave me a thorough pat down and they inspected and detected my luggage very carefully. I was both impressed and surprised that I was able to hop on my flight.

I thought I had dodged a bullet.

Land SFO. Take shuttle bus to hotel. I won’t name the hotel. Let’s just say it’s a lower end chain I wouldn’t normally stay at but, as I said, this was a very last minute trip and with my usual chains either sold out or going for $700 a night I figured I could put up with the relative dump for a couple of nights.

They have my reservation that I made online. Give them my credit card.

“ID please."

I tell my story. Consternation. “Umm, do you have a passport?"

Well, no. But I can show you any number of cards. Here’s my company badge with a photo. You can easily look me up online. 

Nope. It was starting to look as if I’d have to start dialing various friends in the Bay area to see if they had a spare couch I could use.

At this point, what I really wanted to say was: “Look. If I wanted to concoct some complicated scam for free hotel nights that somehow involved having 1.) an online reservation, 2.) a wallet full of cards including the credit card used to make the reservation, 3.) an official looking company ID, but 4.) no government-issued photo ID, I’m pretty sure it would be at an exotic resort and not an SFO fleabag."

To bring us back to the original topic, sure, you can always impose more hard and fast rules but you really need to think about whether inflexibly imposing those rules is the best approach for the business. 

Lesson #2: Think about whether potential risks justify the costs of eliminating them (which you can never fully do anyway)

In the end, I was able to check in. I didn’t say what I was thinking and we reached an agreement whereby I could pay cash, including a security deposit. (Fortunately, the dollar amount was small enough that I was able to withdraw what I needed from the ATM in the lobby.) Luckily, I did have my company ID with a photo; I don’t think they’d have let me stay with no photo ID at all—my face being all over the Web notwithstanding. 

So I do give some small amount of credit to the local manager for bending, however slightly, to what I have to assume are quite rigid corporate rules.

Lesson #3: Empower employees to do the right thing as much as possible

I was also pleasantly surprised how easy and relatively inexpensive ($25) it was to replace my driver’s license on the Massachusetts DMV site. Which brings us to our last lesson.

Lesson #4: If your policies and customer experience fail to meet the standards set by both the TSA and the Massachusetts DMV, I’m pretty sure you’re doing something wrong