đź’ˇ Strategic Friction: Using Cost to Defend Against Abuse
In the world of security product management, success often means nothing happens. No breaches, no fraud, no headlines. But behind that quiet success is a deliberate strategy—one that increasingly hinges on a powerful concept: cost.
Security teams are learning to think like their adversaries. Attackers operate like businesses, with infrastructure, targets, and profit margins. To disrupt them, defenders must do more than detect—they must impose cost.
🧠Why Cost Matters
Most abuse is financially motivated. Whether it’s fake account creation, credential stuffing, or crypto mining, attackers rely on scale and efficiency. If defenders can make attacks more expensive—without harming legitimate users—they can break the attacker’s business model.
This shift from pure prevention to economic disruption reframes how we design defenses. It’s not just about stopping bad behavior; it’s about making it unprofitable.
🛠️ Tactics for Injecting Cost
Security PMs have a growing toolkit for imposing cost:
- Throttling and rate limits: Slow down automated abuse without blocking real users.
- Device and IP binding: Force attackers to use unique hardware or networks, increasing overhead.
- Time delays and cooling-off periods: Introduce latency that disrupts attacker workflows.
- Round-trip verification: Require consistent signals across sessions, making automation harder.
- Infrastructure disruption: Collaborate across platforms to dismantle attacker ecosystems.
Each tactic adds friction—but the art lies in applying it strategically, so that attackers feel the pain while legitimate users barely notice.
⚖️ Balancing Friction and Usability
The challenge is nuance. Overzealous defenses can frustrate real users, leading to churn or reputational damage. Smart security design minimizes false positives and tailors friction to risk signals.
For example, locking a flow to a known device may be seamless for a valid user, but a major hurdle for an attacker using a phone farm. Similarly, requiring a code sent to a verified number is trivial for a real user—but costly at scale for abusers.
đź’¬ Understanding Attacker ROI
To design effective defenses, PMs must understand attacker economics:
- What’s the value of a successful attack?
- How much infrastructure is required?
- What’s the cost of failure or detection?
This mindset helps teams prioritize defenses that hit attackers where it hurts—without wasting resources on low-impact threats.
🤝 Threat Sharing and Durable Defense
Cost-based defense becomes even more powerful when paired with threat sharing. By collaborating across platforms and industries, defenders can dismantle attacker infrastructure, not just deflect it.
This creates durable protection—forcing attackers to rebuild, retool, and rethink. It’s not just about moving the problem elsewhere; it’s about making the problem unsustainable.
Security product management is evolving. It’s no longer just about building walls—it’s about understanding the economics of abuse and designing systems that quietly, strategically, and relentlessly erode the attacker’s advantage.