The importance of learning from mistakes

Previously, in my career as an application security consultant in large organizations, I struggled to convey the importance of a particular security concept or principle to a development team. Although developers can appreciate the theory of an underlying issue (for example, SQL injection), there can be a perception that the issue is not a real-world example and would not occur in practice. The most powerful tactic in such cases is to provide a practical hands-on demonstration of the vulnerability, and then, even more impactful, is to demonstrate how this issue impacted an organization by showcasing details of a breach or incident.

We are living in an age of greater transparency in the disclosure of security incidents, thanks to the advent of responsible disclosure initiatives and managed bug bounty programs. Organizations are far more likely to disclose the nature of a breach and the actions they have taken to prevent a recurrence, rather...