…is up at Dark Reading. It’s a rant on the “20 worst…” lists that have become so popular. It’s not that the lists aren’t good, it’s that so many of the items on the list can be boiled down into a few basic problems. In the column I, you guessed it, bile them collards down, as the old song has it. I’ll take the pot likker and stop this string of analogies before I’m compelled to bring anything like chitlins to the table.

You know, though, a lot of the very complicated things we worry about can be broken down into very simple rules. I’ve had to mandate–and take–sexual harassment classes in various jobs. All the words, examples, and legal precedents can be summed up very neatly: Be a gentleman; be a lady; don’t be an ass. There–I’ve just saved you thousands of dollars on harassment training. In the same way, I run across so many IT problems that could have been solved if someone–anyone, actually–had applied Thomas Watson’s famous word: Think.

We’ve built such a cult around speed that thinking about the problem we’re trying to solve and the consequences of our solution gets short shrift. I’m sure you can supply your own example here; anyone who’s been in business for more than 38 minutes can. It’s time to bring thinking back into fashion. Security is a good place to start, but it’s starting that’s the key.

Think.

Categories: Security, Enterprise