Soft security
Encyclopedia
Soft security usually refers to security
which protects something from harm in quiet and unobtrusive ways, often invisibly and after the fact, rather than with visible barriers before the fact. Soft security can refer to immediate security measures, such as silent burglar alarms or motion detectors, but often refers to more elaborate social security systems such as the moral network in a tightly-knit community—for example, a cluster of friends on a busy city street.
The term has gained widespread use in wiki communities, notably MeatballWiki
. A quote from their page on SoftSecurity:
The differentiation between soft security and hard security was first made by Rasmusson and Jansson who used the term hard security for traditional mechanisms like authentication and access control, and soft security for
social control mechanisms.
Wikipedia
documents are a typical example of soft security principles, using discussion pages, history, policies and guidelines, in contrast to traditional document control mechanisms using workflow
and authorization
.
Security
Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Security as a form of protection are structures and processes that provide or improve security as a condition. The Institute for Security and Open Methodologies in the OSSTMM 3 defines security as "a form of protection...
which protects something from harm in quiet and unobtrusive ways, often invisibly and after the fact, rather than with visible barriers before the fact. Soft security can refer to immediate security measures, such as silent burglar alarms or motion detectors, but often refers to more elaborate social security systems such as the moral network in a tightly-knit community—for example, a cluster of friends on a busy city street.
The term has gained widespread use in wiki communities, notably MeatballWiki
MeatballWiki
MeatballWiki is a wiki dedicated to online communities, network culture, and hypermedia.Founded in 2000, its original goal was to focus on collaborative hypermedia, but current topics range from intellectual property to cyberpunk to the confusion of URIs....
. A quote from their page on SoftSecurity:
The differentiation between soft security and hard security was first made by Rasmusson and Jansson who used the term hard security for traditional mechanisms like authentication and access control, and soft security for
social control mechanisms.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
documents are a typical example of soft security principles, using discussion pages, history, policies and guidelines, in contrast to traditional document control mechanisms using workflow
Workflow
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
and authorization
Authorization
Authorization is the function of specifying access rights to resources, which is related to information security and computer security in general and to access control in particular. More formally, "to authorize" is to define access policy...
.