Series

Fooled by Best Practice.

A five-part series by Jim McKenney

Best practice is the advice of survivors. It records what the ones still standing happened to do, and says nothing of the ones who did the same and are gone. These five essays carry Nassim Taleb's argument out of finance and into the control room, where the checklist that has never failed is often the one most certain to fail.

Start with Part I

The series

Five essays, in order

  1. I

    The Cemetery You Cannot See

    We have not had a significant incident. It is said as proof that the defences work, and it is proof of one route through a very large space of routes.

    Read Part I
  2. II

    The Two Sides of the Table

    The turkey's evidence is strongest on the last afternoon of its life. What matters is not the ending but that the measured stability rose right up to the transition.

    Read Part II
  3. III

    Running the Paths That Did Not Happen

    A simulation run against the architecture diagram samples counterfactual histories of a facility that does not exist.

    Read Part III
  4. IV

    The Barbell, Physics at One End and Simulation at the Other

    An agent that steals the processor for fifteen milliseconds can trip a protective relay. Information can be restored from backup. A compressor cannot.

    Read Part IV
  5. V

    Now, Next, Never

    Since 31 March 2023 standalone cyber policies written at Lloyd's have had to exclude state backed attacks. Operators of critical infrastructure are the most likely targets of exactly that class of attacker.

    Read Part V
Back to the corpusStart with Part I

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