Fail well

Failing badly and failing well are concepts in systems security and network security (and engineering in general) describing how a system reacts to failure. The terms have been popularized by Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and security consultant.

A system that fails badly is one that fails catastrophically once failure occurs. A single point of failure can thus bring down the whole system. Examples include:

A system that fails well is one that compartmentalizes or contains failure. Examples include:

Designing a system to 'fail well' has also been alleged to be a better use of limited security funds than the typical quest to eliminate all potential sources of errors and failure.

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