Comments on: Why Security Matters (And It’s Not Why You Think): A Brief Story. http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/why-security-matters-and-its-not-why-you-think-a-brief-story/ programming, politics, & other religious issues Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:16:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: Brian http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/why-security-matters-and-its-not-why-you-think-a-brief-story/#comment-32283 Brian Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:00:00 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2008/01/05/why-security-matters-and-its-not-why-you-think-a-brief-story/#comment-32283 Heh. At work we use different names for production's superuser account and development's superuser account, with different passwords. And then I set up a special account which has select privileges on everything, but insert/update/delete privileges on nothing. I then set up my ~/.pgpass so I can log into development superuser or the read-only user without giving a password, but to log into development superuser I have to give a password. This means that before I can do anything that might actually cause damage, I have to stop and type in a password- which forces me to stop and think. But I can jump on to production any time I want easily enough- in read only mode. Look, but don't touch. This has only saved my ass about three times... in the last seven days. Also, backups, backups, backups. I haven't yet <EM>had</EM> to recover from backups yet (I have recovered a couple of times just to make sure I could- I'm not paranoid, they are out to get me). It's nice to know they're there, however. Heh. At work we use different names for production’s superuser account and development’s superuser account, with different passwords. And then I set up a special account which has select privileges on everything, but insert/update/delete privileges on nothing. I then set up my ~/.pgpass so I can log into development superuser or the read-only user without giving a password, but to log into development superuser I have to give a password.

This means that before I can do anything that might actually cause damage, I have to stop and type in a password- which forces me to stop and think. But I can jump on to production any time I want easily enough- in read only mode. Look, but don’t touch.

This has only saved my ass about three times… in the last seven days.

Also, backups, backups, backups. I haven’t yet had to recover from backups yet (I have recovered a couple of times just to make sure I could- I’m not paranoid, they are out to get me). It’s nice to know they’re there, however.

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