The Flock is Coding Now, and Nobody Checked the Fence
Victor Woolridge, Senior Legacy Architect & Paranoia Consultant
I have been in this industry since before most of you were born. I remember when code was written by trained professionals who understood the consequences of their keystrokes. We reviewed every line. We documented everything. We used magnetic tape backups and we liked it.
Now I read that artificial intelligence is writing software for the flock. The lambs themselves are generating applications at unprecedented scale. Security teams, already stretched thin, are watching the pasture expand in every direction while the shepherds refuse to hire additional staff.
This is precisely the scenario I warned about in my 1997 internal memo, which management ignored.
Let me be perfectly clear. Every new application is a potential hole in the fence. Every line of code generated by these AI contraptions is a surface the wolves can probe. In the old days, we had gatekeepers. We had review boards. We had paranoia, which is simply another word for prudence.
The report indicates that privacy and security must "start in code." A revolutionary insight, apparently. We knew this during the dial-up era. We built security into the foundation because we understood that retrofitting an electric fence around a pasture already full of coyotes is an exercise in futility.
The Sky Pasture makes this worse, naturally. Applications multiply. Data scatters across regions you cannot pronounce. The flock grazes in fields your security team has never seen and will never audit.
I have watched this industry abandon discipline for velocity. The shepherds want more applications, faster, cheaper. They do not ask whether the fence is intact. They do not ask whether the new lambs know the difference between real grain and fake grain designed to lure them into the forest.
The wolves are patient. They always have been.
Remediation
- Establish code review protocols. Every application, regardless of origin, must pass inspection before deployment. If you cannot explain what it does, it does not enter the pasture.
- Inventory your fences. You cannot secure what you have not catalogued. Map every application. Document every data flow. Use a spreadsheet if necessary. We managed empires with spreadsheets.
- Reduce reliance on the Sky Pasture. If you must use it, encrypt everything. Trust nothing. Verify constantly.
- Train the flock. The lambs generating code must understand security fundamentals. Ignorance is not an excuse. It is a vulnerability.
- Demand staffing from the shepherds. Present the risk in terms they understand: liability, regulatory fines, reputational damage. Money is the only language they speak.
The old ways worked because we respected the threat. Modern tools have made you soft. Correct this before the wolves remind you why we built fences in the first place.
Original Report: https://thehackernews.com/2025/12/why-data-security-and-privacy-need-to.html