One chestnut from my history in lottery game development:
While our security staff was incredibly tight and did a generally good job, oftentimes levels of paranoia were off the charts.
Once they went around hot gluing shut all of the “unnecessary” USB ports in our PCs under the premise of mitigating data theft via thumb drive, while ignoring that we were all Internet-connected and VPNs are a thing, also that every machine had a RW optical drive.
As a security guy - as soon as I can get federal auditors to agree, I’m getting rid of password expiration.
The main problem is they don’t audit with logic. It’s a script and a feeling. No password expiration FEELS less secure. Nevermind the literal years of data and research. Drives me nuts.
Cite NIST SP 800-63B.
https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html
I’ve successfully used it to tell auditors to fuck off about password rotation in the healthcare space.
Now, to be in compliance with NIST guidelines, you do also need to require MFA. This document is what federal guidelines are based on, which is why you’re starting to see Federal gov websites require MFA for access.
Either way, I’d highly encourage everyone to give the full document a read through. Not enough people are aware of it and this revision was shockingly reasonable when it came out a year or two ago.
It’s counterintuitive. Drives people to use less secure passwords that they’re likely to reuse or to just increment; Password1, Password2, etc.