Zach Holman's post "Nontraditional Red Teams" advocates for expanding the traditional security-focused red team concept to other areas of a company. He argues that dedicated teams, separate from existing product or engineering groups, can provide valuable insights by simulating real-world user behavior and identifying potential problems with products, marketing campaigns, and company policies. These "red teams" can act as devil's advocates, challenging assumptions and uncovering blind spots that internal teams might miss, ultimately leading to more robust and user-centric products and strategies. Holman emphasizes the importance of empowering these teams to operate independently and providing them the freedom to explore unconventional approaches.
The Canva outage highlighted the challenges of scaling a popular service during peak demand. The surge in holiday season traffic overwhelmed Canva's systems, leading to widespread disruptions and emphasizing the difficulty of accurately predicting and preparing for such spikes. While Canva quickly implemented mitigation strategies and restored service, the incident underscored the importance of robust infrastructure, resilient architecture, and effective communication during outages, especially for services heavily relied upon by businesses and individuals. The event serves as another reminder of the constant balancing act between managing explosive growth and maintaining reliable service.
Several commenters on Hacker News discussed the Canva outage, focusing on the complexities of distributed systems. Some highlighted the challenges of debugging such systems, particularly when saturation and cascading failures are involved. The discussion touched upon the difficulty of predicting and mitigating these types of outages, even with robust testing. Some questioned Canva's architectural choices, suggesting potential improvements like rate limiting and circuit breakers, while others emphasized the inherent unpredictability of large-scale systems and the inevitability of occasional failures. There was also debate about the trade-offs between performance and resilience, and the difficulty of achieving both simultaneously. A few users shared their personal experiences with similar outages in other systems, reinforcing the widespread nature of these challenges.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936162
HN commenters largely agree with the author's premise that "red teams" are often misused, focusing on compliance and shallow vulnerability discovery rather than true adversarial emulation. Several highlighted the importance of a strong security culture and open communication for red teaming to be effective. Some commenters shared anecdotes about ineffective red team exercises, emphasizing the need for clear objectives and buy-in from leadership. Others discussed the difficulty in finding skilled red teamers who can think like real attackers. A compelling point raised was the importance of "purple teaming" – combining red and blue teams for collaborative learning and improvement, rather than treating it as a purely adversarial exercise. Finally, some argued that the term "red team" has become diluted and overused, losing its original meaning.
The Hacker News post titled "Nontraditional Red Teams," linking to Zach Holman's blog post about the same topic, has a moderate number of comments, sparking a discussion around various aspects of red teaming and its implementation.
Several commenters focused on the practicalities and challenges of implementing red teams, especially in smaller organizations. One commenter pointed out the difficulty of finding individuals with the right skillset and mindset for red teaming, suggesting that a good red teamer needs to be a "jack of all trades" with a deep understanding of the business. This commenter also highlighted the cost factor, noting that dedicating resources to a full-time red team can be prohibitive for smaller companies. Another echoed this sentiment, suggesting that smaller organizations might explore alternatives like hiring external consultants for periodic red team exercises.
The discussion also delved into the importance of defining clear scopes and objectives for red teams. One commenter emphasized the need for specific, measurable goals to avoid the red team becoming an "unguided missile," potentially wasting time and resources on less critical areas. This ties into another comment highlighting the risk of red teams becoming overly focused on technical exploits rather than business-level risks. They advocate for a broader approach that considers not only vulnerabilities in systems but also vulnerabilities in processes and human factors.
Another thread within the comments explored the cultural aspects of red teaming. One commenter discussed the importance of fostering a culture of psychological safety, where team members feel comfortable challenging assumptions and reporting potential issues without fear of retribution. They argue that without this safety net, red teaming efforts might be stifled, and valuable insights might be missed.
Finally, some comments offered alternative perspectives on achieving similar outcomes to red teaming without dedicating a full team. One commenter suggested incorporating "red team thinking" into existing roles, encouraging employees to critically assess their own work and identify potential weaknesses. Another mentioned the concept of "chaos engineering" as a complementary approach, focused on testing the resilience of systems through controlled disruptions.
While there's no single overwhelmingly compelling comment, the discussion collectively offers a valuable exploration of the nuances of red teaming, highlighting both its potential benefits and the practical challenges involved in its implementation. The comments provide insights into the importance of clear objectives, the right skillset, and a supportive organizational culture for successful red teaming. They also explore alternatives and complementary approaches for organizations with limited resources.