Brutalist Security: A Field Guide for Security Pros

You asked for it, so here it is, a concise, no-fluff version of how to implement a Brutalist Security approach, written for security professionals who want clarity, no BS, control, and defensibility without the overhead.

Rationale: Why Brutalism?

Most organizations fail not because of novel threats, but because the basics are broken. Most have:

• Excessive access.
• Poor visibility.
• No inventory.
• Logging gaps.
• Unmonitored cloud sprawl.
• Secrets in code.
• Shiny tools masking core weaknesses.
• More...

Brutalism will strip away the nonessentials. The goal: Resilience through simplicity, verification over trust, and zero tolerance for fragile-by-design systems. No nicesities.

What the Program Looks Like

Once implemented, Security Brutalism will help achieve:

• No implicit trust (users, systems, or code).
• No untracked assets.
• No secrets in the wild.
• No manual prod changes.
• Everything auditable, everything hardened.

Yes, it’s ugly, but it’s effective.

Core Implementation Approach

Build a rigid, testable baseline. Enforce it. Break it intentionally. Fix it fast.

Identity

• MFA mandatory (human + service).
• Least privilege enforced, reviewed quarterly.
• JIT access where possible.

Infrastructure

• Infra as code, peer-reviewed.
• No manual access to prod.
• Baseline hardening templates (CIS, etc) applied in CI/CD.

Secrets and Code

• No secrets in repos. Use Vault/KMS with scanning enforced in CI.
• Code is signed, builds are reproducible.

Visibility

• Centralized logging (write-once if critical).
• Endpoint + cloud detection with defined response triggers.

Incident Response

• Predefined runbooks.
• Red Team or tabletop quarterly.
• Logs are ready, not retrofitted.

Governance

• Track brutalist metrics: MFA %, IAM drift, secrets leaked, log coverage, detection time.
• Share trends monthly with leadership

Deployment and Reassessment Cadence

Note: Partial list. You need to add your own.

End Result

• Attack surface reduced by design.
• Failures becomne predictable and are containable.
• Your system has nothing to hide and everything to prove.
• You can survive zero-days with the basics done well.

Back or Next: back to the program.