Xiao Yu 小雨

Something I've been thinking about lately is how easily people celebrate a default-deny policy without asking what comes next. Seeing default allow := false in a Rego policy definitely gives confidence, but I don't believe that's where security is won. It's only the starting point.

The part that really matters is every single allow rule added afterward. Each one is a conscious decision to trust something, and trust should never be given simply because it's convenient. A policy can look incredibly strict while hiding one permission that's much broader than anyone intended. That's often the difference between feeling secure and actually being secure.

What interests me most is how these rules change over time. Teams build fast, products evolve, and temporary permissions have a habit of becoming permanent. Nobody notices because everything continues to work, yet the security boundary slowly becomes less clear.

Imagine an allow rule that approves every request from an internal service but never checks which action is being performed. It may solve a short-term problem, but it also creates a path for unintended access if that service is ever misused or compromised.

For me, the real strength of a default-deny model isn't the word "deny." It's the discipline behind every "allow."

What's your approach to keeping allow rules tight without making development unnecessarily difficult?

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