Security Brutalism and VUCA

Security Brutalism is not just an aesthetic or a dry approach, it's a philosophical response to a VUCA-driven world. Where polished security fails in the face of chaos, Security Brutalism responds with radical clarity, simplicity, and more rigidity. In that way, it becomes a survival strategy, not just a design choice.

Connecting Security Brutalism to VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) in the context of modern information/cyber security reveals a deeper philosophy about how we can defend systems in an increasingly chaotic digital environment.

Here's how these ideas intersect. As with the Runbook, this is a starting point, and it should be tailored to the individual organization's needs and context.

Understanding Security Brutalism

Security Brutalism is a design and defensive posture that prioritizes function over form, resilience over elegance, and raw transparency over user-friendliness. It can translate in the world of security to practices like:

• Clear, unabstracted protocols.
• Uncompromising access controls.
• Explicit, sometimes severe, warnings or lack of permissions.
• Systems that are intentionally hard to misuse, even if they’re hard to use.

Security Brutalism is a reaction to the over-engineered, overly-abstracted security models and controls that fail under real-world pressure.

VUCA And InfoSec

VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity - describes the reality of modern information security:

• Volatility: Rapidly changing threat landscape (zero-days, new attack vectors).
• Uncertainty: Difficulty predicting how or where attacks will come.
• Complexity: Interconnected systems, supply chain dependencies, third-party risk.
• Ambiguity: Lack of clarity in data, logs, alerts; unclear attribution or intent.

VUCA challenges traditional, polished security models that assume predictability and control.

The Intersection of Security Brutalism and VUCA

Security Brutalism thrives in VUCA.

• Volatility demands resilience. Brutalist security architectures favor simplicity in enforcement (like minimal privileges, hard segmentation), which is easier to verify and trust in volatile conditions.
• Uncertainty requires clarity. Brutalist security and supporting systems expose their mechanisms plainly. There’s no "security through obscurity." That makes it easier to reason about and audit under uncertain conditions.
• Complexity is countered with reductionism. Brutalist security strip away abstraction, letting defenders see what's actually happening rather than relying on a fragile layer of tooling.
• Ambiguity is met with hard edges. Rather than allow ambiguous interpretations of risk, brutalist security makes binary decisions: allow/deny, in/out, known/unknown.

Some Examples In Practice

VUCA as it applies to modern complex security:

• Ambiguous or Noisy Security Alerts: In a VUCA environment, the sheer volume and often unclear nature of security alerts (Ambiguity) can overwhelm security teams. Traditional security tools might generate numerous low-fidelity alerts, making it difficult to discern genuine threats from false positives.
• Rapidly Evolving Attack Vectors and Zero-Day Exploits: The Volatility of the real world, characterized by the constant emergence of new attack methods and zero-day vulnerabilities, challenges security teams to adapt quickly. Traditional security models that rely on signature-based detection or complex behavioral analysis can be slow to update and may miss novel attacks.

VUCA as it applies to Security Brutalism:

• Clear Security Alerts: A brutalist approach would favor explicit and high-signal alerts. Instead of nuanced or potentially misleading warnings, the system would generate clear, direct indicators of compromise or policy violations. This reduces ambiguity and allows security teams to focus on actionable threats, simplifying response and strengthening defense. The reduction in noise makes the actual threats more visible and defensible.
• Enforcement of Baselines and Fundamental Security Principles: A brutalist approach would prioritize strict and simple enforcement of fundamental security principles that are less susceptible to specific attack vectors. Because the program focuses on what is explicitly allowed rather than trying to anticipate every possible attack, brutalism creates a more resilient and defensible posture. Even if a new exploit emerges (Volatility), it is more likely to be blocked by the strict, unwavering enforcement of core security principles. This simplifies the security model by reducing reliance on complex and constantly changing detection mechanisms, leading to a stronger and more consistently defensible system.

In Short

What you see is what's enforced; what breaks doesn't collapse the system; and what remains is strong and recoverable.