A million years ago (when I was at NASA working on security for people like physicists designing robotics for Mars) we talked about all the obstacles to swarms being successful.

Lately it seems like the script has been flipped and journalists are breathlessly warning that nothing can stop swarms.

In a decade or so we went from “can’t get swarms to flow” to “swarms can’t be stopped”. Both are exaggerating the truth.

The reality is somewhere in between, yet I fail to see anyone these days taking about the simple obstacle side of things.

In a 2014 lecture I was invited to give by the soon-to-be ill-fated head of Facebook security, for example, I gave specific examples of swarm countermeasures including illustrations.

More to the point, I had been asked to keynote a week of security training inside a huge silicon valley brand. My pitch was a move from synthesis to analysis; security teams must prepare immediately for an onslaught of inexpensive integrity attacks (realities of securing big data — my latest book).

I got a lot of nodding heads, right before I watched the newly minted head of Facebook security do the exact opposite. The integrity breaches he allowed, despite many direct warnings, are still known as the worst in history (facilitating atrocity crimes).

In later presentations I showed how swarm platforms like Waze were being countered and their agents redirected.

So here we are. The world is carping about horrible integrity attacks, just as I warned, and saying they will get worse. That’s progress. However, the preparation steps of a decade ago or more seem to be overlooked.

I guess it’s the ancient problem that stark fear sells far more than nuance of risk management.

“Sugar filling mouths can’t be stopped” gets more eyeballs than “brush your teeth twice a day” let alone “change your diet based on science”.

The kind of stuff the old NASA physicists would probably say is painfully obvious: Throw up strategic obstacles and a swarm may be frozen if not suicidal.

Very inexpensive, very effective. What’s not to like?

We need to talk far more about integrity, the stuff that makes quality, because most or even all swarms right now don’t have it.

The over emphasis on confidentially and availability counter-measures has been missing an obvious weak point in security’s three legged stool.

In fact we’re long past the point where people blandly demanding end-to-end encryption should be asked what exactly they’re doing about dangerous integrity breaches (to avoid repeating Facebook mistakes).