Top all-time · #6238
Phil Venables
Personal blog · philvenables.com/postsecuritybusiness
Phil Venables writes Risk and Cyber, a personal blog at philvenables.com about security and business. Since 2020, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “Ceremonial security and cargo cults”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link this security writer's essays, such as "Ceremonial Security and Cargo Cults", in discussions of security practice and deprecated advice like session expiry and password rules.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Risk & Cybersecurity
Most-linked posts?
- Ceremonial security and cargo cults2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-23
- Caricatures of Security People2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-04
What Hacker News says?
NIST dropped the password change recommendation a while back [1] but it still lingers on. The staying power and long tail of this deprecated advice is unfortunate, to say the least. I don't personally agree that short sessions is bad advice, but Phil Venables has an article that you might enjoy, "Ceremonial Security and Cargo Cults" [2] [1] https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-FAQ/#q-b05 [2] https://www.philvenables.com/po…
Comment linking /post/ceremonial-security-and-cargo-cults
on “Short session expiration does not help security”Submitted Cybersecurity and the curse of binary thinking as a story · 153 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ceremonial security and cargo cults as a story · 21 points
HN discussionSubmitted Human Error as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Security Professionals Guide to Dealing with Disagreement as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Coming Incident Crisis? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Art of Influencing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Caricatures of Security People as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Caricatures of Security People as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cybersecurity – The Board's Perspective as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rolling with the Punches: Why Cybersecurity Is Backgammon, Not Chess as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Organizational Politics and the Security Program as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Going Faster: Isochrones and "Time to Hello World" as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Where the Wild Things Are: Second Order Risks of AI as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted You Only Get 3 Metrics – Which Ones Would You Pick? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are Security Analogies Counterproductive? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cybersecurity and the Board: A Fresh Perspective? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
