Most teams don’t get hacked because they didn’t buy the right tool. They get hacked because the basics weren’t consistent: identity, logging, patching, and secrets.
The good news: the basics are also the easiest to scale—if you design them to be low-friction. Here are the “boring controls” I prioritize because they prevent real incidents without slowing delivery.
Identity first (and least privilege by default)
If you only fix one thing, fix identity. Strong MFA, sane role design, and short-lived access are the backbone. The goal is simple: remove permanent keys and reduce the blast radius of mistakes.
Logging you can actually use
“We have logs” isn’t the same as “we can answer questions during an incident.” Pick a small set of events you always capture: auth, privileged actions, network edges, and deployment activity.
Patch like you mean it
Patch management is rarely a technical problem—it’s an ownership and scheduling problem. Define who owns patching for each layer (OS, runtime, app dependencies) and put it on a cadence.
Secrets: treat them like radioactive material
Secrets should have one home, clear rotation rules, and tight access. More importantly: no one should need to paste secrets into tickets, chat, or “temporary” docs.
Make secure choices the default choice
The best security programs don’t ask developers to become security experts. They give developers a paved road: templates, CI checks, and sensible defaults that prevent the common failure modes.
One practical test
If security work only happens during audits, it won’t stick. If it happens quietly every day in CI, automation, and access workflows, you’ll barely notice it—until the day it matters.