CIRCUIT MAGAZINE ISSUE 59 By James Bore
cyber security fundamentals
Security and Technical Debt Collection You cannot work in close proximity to technical people, particularly those who build systems, for long without hearing the term “technical debt” bandied around.
Technical debt is what you are adding to every time you choose an easy or quick solution now, rather than looking at longerterm strategies. It is the technical expression of ‘failing to plan is planning to fail.’ And it has consequences. Suppose a technical system is held together with metaphorical 26
prayers and duct tape. In that case, it will often be too fragile to effectively maintain (i.e. trying to update or patch it is likely to cause an outage or just break it irreparably). Given the earliest systems in an organisation are also often the most important to its operation, the most critical systems are usually the ones carrying the most technical debt.
