Much time and effort goes into ensuring the safety and security of individuals as they interact with digital systems. A great deal of trust is given on the part of individuals that rely on the who’s responsibility it is to ensure that our systems remain as safe as possible. While it is impossible to ensure that our systems are protected from any and all threats, known and unknown, engineers build safety precautions into our systems to prevent hazards, disruptions, and other threats from compromising the integrity of the systems that we rely on. In other words, their goal is not to provide security from all threats, but their goal is to provide adequate security.

 Adequate security is determined by the stakeholder’s objectives and priorities. Adequate security is made up of two types of protections: Active protection and Passive Protection. Active protection is described as “security functions of a system that exhibit security protection behavior and therefore; Have functional and performance attributes.” Passive protection is “the environment for the execution and construction of all security functions.” These can include things like architecture, design, and the rules that govern behavior, interaction, and utilization as described in the article “The Need for Systems Engineered-Based Trustworthy Secure Systems”. Additionally, engineers have to strategize for the purpose of ensuring system security.

 The way they do this is through proactive and reactive loss prevention strategy. Proactive loss strategy focuses on the things that can happen rather than the things that might happen. This helps them to identify and neutralize weaknesses and defects that cause system vulnerability. Reactive loss strategy focuses on unanticipated and unforeseen consequences. Systems security engineering allows for more effective reactive responses that are made up of both automated and human interactions. Engineers do these things and much more to ensure the functionality, reliability, security and trust worthiness of the systems that we rely on.