Bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger?

I read the news about ”RSA breach leaks data for hacking SecurID tokens”. I didn’t know about RSA or their owner EMC before, but now I know that they work with solutions for secure information in a lot of big companies, all over the world.

People go together in groups to protect themselves and get more efficient. Then the group grows bigger and stronger and get to be really impressing. The feeling of security is total. Then someone finds out how to damage this creation and suddenly security becomes insecurity, if one falls, then everyone falls…

I think about how they grew cereals on Gotland (Sweden) in the old days. A custom that enthusiasts are picking up and is starting to use again nowadays. In the old days the farmer had a special mixture of different seeds and spread them all on the arable land. Because the seeds where different they could defend themselves in different ways. If the field was hit by any danger like too much rain, not enough rain, fungus, bacterias or insects there would be some types of seeds that would get seriously hurt and others that didn’t. In the end the harvest was more secure to produce a good result, than if the farmer had only spread seeds of one kind.

The normal way to grow cereals today is to spread one type of seed, ”the best”, but that seed will need very specific conditions to grow like it’s supposed to. When everything works out fine the result is very good, but if something that was not foreseen happens, the damage can be a total disaster for the farmer.

I think it’s kind of scary when a lot of big companies all over the world buy security from the same big company. Maybe they should use a mixture of different security solutions like the farmers on Gotland used to do…