Certified: The CISSP Prepcast

Welcome to The Bare Metal Cyber CISSP Prepcast. This series helps you prepare for the ISC squared CISSP exam with focused explanations and practical context.
In this episode, we’re exploring Common Security Flaws in Architecture—one of the most important topics for any cybersecurity professional responsible for designing, evaluating, or maintaining secure systems. Security begins with architecture. The choices made during the design and planning phases shape how resilient a system will be when threats emerge. Unfortunately, many of the most serious cybersecurity breaches result from architectural flaws—problems built into the system from the beginning, rather than caused by later mistakes.
Identifying and addressing architectural flaws early on is not only a best practice—it is often the only way to prevent systemic vulnerabilities that can affect every part of the environment. Flaws that go unaddressed at the architecture level tend to resurface in application behavior, user access problems, data exposure incidents, or performance bottlenecks. By understanding what these flaws are and how they typically arise, you can make better decisions and build more resilient systems from the ground up.
Let’s start by examining the importance of identifying architectural flaws. These flaws represent weaknesses not in code or patch levels, but in the design logic and structural foundation of how a system is built. They can include misplaced trust boundaries, inconsistent access control models, poorly segmented networks, or even the misuse of legacy components in modern environments.
The consequences of these flaws are often severe. Once embedded in production environments, architectural issues can be difficult and expensive to fix. Worse, they can create blind spots—areas where monitoring fails, permissions are overly broad, or vulnerabilities are deeply hidden from view. Attackers who discover these weaknesses can exploit them silently and repeatedly.
Early identification and remediation are critical. Whether you’re launching a new system, expanding a cloud presence, or auditing an existing enterprise environment, examining the architectural choices helps prevent deeper problems. This includes reviewing design documentation, mapping data flows, validating control placement, and aligning architectural design with known security principles and standards.
By addressing these concerns early, organizations reduce their long-term risk profile. System resilience increases. Downtime from configuration or security problems decreases. Teams spend less time responding to incidents, and more time innovating. Understanding these architectural flaws empowers technical teams and decision-makers to ask better questions, challenge flawed assumptions, and make security-conscious design choices from the start.
Now let’s examine one of the most common categories of architectural flaws—insufficient authentication and authorization. These are two distinct but closely related concerns. Authentication determines whether a user or system is who they claim to be. Authorization determines what that user or system is allowed to access once authenticated.
Weak authentication opens the door to impersonation. If a system relies on only a username and password, and does not implement strong credential storage or multi-factor authentication, then attackers can gain unauthorized access using stolen credentials. Weak authentication systems often fail to detect brute force attempts or login anomalies and provide no mechanism to restrict access after repeated failures.
Even if authentication is strong, poor authorization can still allow a user to access sensitive areas they do not need. This might include files, databases, APIs, administrative interfaces, or backup systems. When users are given excessive privileges—especially administrative ones—it becomes easier for internal misuse or external compromise to escalate into a critical breach.
Mitigating these flaws requires layered controls. Multi-factor authentication strengthens verification. Role-based access control ensures users only receive permissions aligned to their job responsibilities. Access reviews must be conducted regularly to remove outdated or unnecessary permissions. Logs and alerts should be in place to detect and respond to access anomalies.
Secure authentication and authorization practices are not optional. They are foundational to any system’s architecture, and failure in this area almost always results in data loss, compliance failures, or infrastructure compromise.
Now let’s turn to another widespread architectural flaw—misconfiguration and default settings. This category includes forgotten test systems left online, default passwords that were never changed, open ports that were never needed, and unsecured services that should have been disabled.
These flaws are incredibly common in production environments. Often, they originate from a lack of standardization during deployment, poor documentation, or pressure to move fast without considering the long-term implications of system configuration choices.
Misconfiguration becomes especially dangerous when it occurs in internet-facing systems—such as cloud storage, web servers, or management consoles. A simple oversight, such as leaving a debug mode active or exposing a management port without firewall protection, can become a direct entry point for attackers.
Mitigation strategies include adopting secure baseline standards, which define the required configuration state for each type of system. Automated configuration management tools can enforce these standards and report deviations in real time. Secure-by-default practices, where systems are initially deployed with restrictive settings, ensure that nothing is unnecessarily exposed.
Configuration management must also be continuous. As systems are patched, upgraded, or integrated with new components, settings can drift. Regular configuration audits help identify these changes and ensure that secure states are preserved.
For more cyber-related content and books, please visit cyberauthor dot me. You'll find best-selling books, training tools, and resources tailored specifically for cybersecurity professionals. Also, visit Bare Metal Cyber dot com for more episodes, guides, and certification support.
Let’s now look at another critical flaw—failure to incorporate secure design principles. These principles are the backbone of modern cybersecurity architecture. They include ideas like defense in depth, least privilege, separation of duties, and fail-safe defaults. When these principles are ignored, systems become brittle, flat, and easy to compromise.
For example, without defense in depth, a single firewall failure can expose the entire internal network. Without least privilege, a single compromised user account can access and modify sensitive data. Without clear separation of duties, one person might be able to create, approve, and deploy changes without oversight—opening the door to fraud or unintentional damage.
Organizations must embed secure design principles into every stage of the architecture lifecycle. That includes early planning, development, deployment, and ongoing operations. This is achieved through the adoption of established security frameworks, the use of architectural review boards, and the consistent application of security checklists and modeling tools.
Teams must ask key questions: What happens if this control fails? Is this system over-relying on one layer of protection? Can a user escalate privileges without detection? Do users have more access than they need?
When secure design is built into system architecture, organizations are more likely to withstand attacks, recover from failures, and maintain the trust of users and stakeholders.
Now let’s turn to the importance of continuous improvement in architectural security. Threats change. Systems evolve. What was considered secure five years ago may no longer be adequate today. That’s why architectural security cannot be treated as a one-time event. It requires regular reassessment and refinement.
Organizations must establish a process for reviewing architecture based on emerging threats, technology shifts, regulatory changes, and operational lessons. Every incident, vulnerability report, and audit finding should feed back into architectural review.
Cross-functional collaboration is key. Security teams must work with developers, architects, infrastructure engineers, and business leaders to ensure architectural decisions reflect reality and align with organizational risk tolerance. This collaboration must be built into change management processes, project planning, and investment decisions.
Training also supports continuous improvement. Architects and developers should be educated on common design flaws, attack vectors, and new tools. Security professionals should remain current on threat modeling techniques and secure design patterns. Everyone must understand how their role influences architectural outcomes.
Finally, adaptive strategies ensure long-term resilience. This includes adopting microsegmentation, applying zero trust principles, automating architectural review processes, and simulating failure scenarios to identify hidden dependencies or blind spots.
Thank you for tuning into the CISSP Prepcast by Bare Metal Cyber. Visit baremetalcyber.com for additional episodes, comprehensive CISSP study resources, and personalized certification support. Strengthen your understanding of Common Security Flaws in Architecture, and we'll consistently support your journey toward CISSP certification success.