The Brutalism Way of Security

Note: In the spirit of The Mattis Way of War, a study that examines General James Mattis's operational style: lean, fast, grounded in doctrine, but with adaptive ferocity and simplicity.

In an industry enamored with shiny dashboards, layered frameworks, and enterprise theater, Brutalist Security offers a stark alternative: raw, principled, aggressive, and fast. It discards unnecessary ornamentation in favor of fundamentals. It favors execution over optics, clarity over complexity, and results over rituals.

Brutalist Security is a posture — a way of thinking, organizing, and acting in security.

1. Doctrine Over Decoration

In a Brutalist worldview, security isn’t a collection of tools or standards. It’s doctrine. It’s the clear, time-tested, hard-won principles that govern how an organization detects, defends, and responds.

Most security programs are bloated with performative controls — things done because they “look secure” or because an auditor once asked for them. Brutalist Security strips these away, keeping only what demonstrably reduces risk or accelerates response.

If it doesn’t help you survive an incident or prevent one outright, it doesn’t belong.

2. Small Teams, Large Impact

Brutalist Security teams are lean by design. A dozen hard-bitten "operators" with domain expertise and authority to act are more valuable than a battalion of outsourced check-pushers.

They operate on trust, skill, and clarity of mission. They don’t need endless process because they’ve trained together, defended together, and think together.

You don’t scale security with headcount. You scale it with autonomy, repetition, and shared purpose.

3. Speed is Security

Security is a race — not against compliance deadlines, but against adversaries. Speed of detection, response, and recovery is more decisive than theoretical coverage.

In the Brutalist Security model, speed is not sloppiness; it’s tempo. It’s the ability to see an alert, triage it instantly, and act decisively — not because of a ticketing workflow, but because you rehearsed it. Because your tools are fast. Because your team has practiced.

Security teams don’t lose because they lacked policy. They lose because they were slow.

4. Decentralized Execution, Centralized Purpose

Brutalist Security doesn't perform well with a central command micromanagement. Instead, it promotes clear strategic intent with decentralized execution.

Every security node — from endpoint security to cloud architecture — must be able to act independently while aligned to a common doctrine. That doctrine is what binds the chaos into cohesion.

Push security down into the teams who own the systems. Let them act quickly, decisively, and without red tape — as long as they’re aligned to the Brutalist Security mission.

5. Raw Terrain, Real Risk

Security doesn’t happen in PowerPoint. It happens in fragile CI/CD pipelines, underfunded SaaS stacks, and tangled business processes.

Brutalist Security practitioners accept the terrain as it is — not as we wish it were. They operate in the actual mess, the dirty systems, the political constraints, and the human behaviors that define modern enterprise risk.

This realism is the foundation of effective defense. Idealism is a liability.

6. Discipline Equals Freedom

The Brutalist Security way borrows from the warrior ethos: discipline is the path to freedom.

The ability to improvise under fire comes only after exhaustive training, rigorous standard operating procedures (SOPs), and relentless simplification. Brutalist security teams drill incident response. They memorize escalation paths. They audit for gaps not annually, but weekly.

This self-imposed discipline frees them to act when the system is breaking down.

7. Technology is a Tool, Not a Crutch

Technology should serve doctrine, not dictate it. Brutalist Security teams buy tools for function, not fashion. They discard products that don’t perform and build small, purpose-driven automation where needed.

They avoid sprawl. They refuse to let vendor narratives replace internal clarity. Every tool is questioned. Every dashboard is earned.

This doesn’t mean being anti-tech. It means refusing to let tech replace thinking.

8. Understand Your Adversary

Brutalist Security invests in understanding the adversary. This is more than threat intelligence. It’s doctrinal awareness. What does the adversary value? How do they think? What patterns, motives, and operational rhythms define their campaigns?

Security defense without adversary insight is like training for a war without knowing who you’re fighting. Brutalist teams study breaches like battlefield commanders. They learn enemy doctrine and adapt.

9. Aggressive Defense

Brutalist security doesn’t sit back. It hunts.

Detection is not passive monitoring. It’s active pursuit. Response is not containment. It’s reclaiming ground.

Whether through deception, visibility engineering, or threat-informed defense, Brutalist Security teams stay on the front foot. They engage the attacker as a thinking opponent, not an abstract risk.

You can’t win playing defense. But you can strike back.

10. War is Chaos. Security Is Too.

Security doesn’t fail because you missed a framework control. It fails because reality diverged from the plan — and your team couldn’t adapt.

Brutalism accepts the chaos. It doesn’t seek to eliminate it, only to survive it. The goal is not perfect coverage. It’s organizational survivability: the ability to bend, absorb shock, recover, and respond.

This is not elegant. It’s not pretty. But it’s real. It's brutal.

Conclusion: Beauty in the Brutal

The Brutalist Way of Security is not a silver bullet. It is a hard, disciplined approach that embraces the rawness of the mission: protecting organizations and businesses in an age of complexity, adversaries, and entropy.

It doesn’t hide behind aesthetic. It doesn’t wait for consensus. It acts.

And in that action — fast, principled, fierce — there is a brutal kind of beauty.