Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Because they tried" doesn't get a B. You're not graded on effort. What you're graded on - when it comes to defense as opposed to recovery, though both are a part of this - is how likely a breach is. Unfortunately, you don't always learn your grade (and when you do, it's bad). "Gambling with security will always be a losing bet in the long run. Rather just make it secure. Going off some strange 'expected resources' i…
No. But if the site gets hacked, I failed. If I asked users for their credits cards and stored it in a publicly accessible plain text file or in a secure system that still gets hacked the end result is still the same. My users are having unauthorized payments coming off their credit cards. I've failed. Maybe I can sleep better at night if I didn't go storing them in plain text and I can make up excuses easier, but I…
> If you offer a bug bounty to improve security, make sure you give a reward for any possible breach that could cause you to get hacked, regardless of whose 'fault' the vulnerability is.
This is true. There's no upside for rejecting this as "out of bounds" except for a relatively tiny sum of cash.
> If you know of a way to increase security, then you should increase it.
This I disagree with completely. If there's anything you can do with negligible cost you should do it, however there are all kinds of costs. There are usability costs, operational costs, training costs, etc, etc.
You can't hand-wave these away by declaring that any breach is failure without recognizing the fact that there is no such thing as perfect security. In fact all security is gambling, and it should be a gamble based on the best odds we can come up with professionally against the cost of failure. If something requires 100% perfect security then that thing should not be done, period.