Trust-Based Security; Or, Trust Considered Harmful

Our review of common, popular risk analysis frameworks finds that they are very homogenous in their approach. These are considered IT Security Industry "best practices." However, one wonders if they are indeed "best", as evinced by the almost daily news of large companies suffering major compromises. Embedded in these "best practices" is the notion that "trust" is "good", i.e. is a desirable feature: "trusted computing;' "trusted third party," etc. We argue for the opposite: that vulnerabilities stem from trust relationships. We propose a a paradigm for risk analysis centered around identifying and minimizing trust relationships. We argue that by bringing trust relationships to the foreground, we can identify paths to compromise that would otherwise go undetected; a more comprehensive assessment of vulnerability, from which one can better prioritize and reduce risk.