I’m a Senior Software Engineer with a strong focus on software architecture, designing secure and scalable systems across automotive, embedded, banking and energy domains.
Active Defense vs. Hacking Back: Where Self-Defense Ends
Every security team I have worked with eventually hits the same wall. You patch, you monitor, you segment the network, and attackers still get in. At that point a tempting question comes up in the room: why not hit back?
In 2018, Harvard Business Review put that question to two people who have spent their careers on it: Dorothy Denning, one of the pioneers of information-warfare research, and Robert M. Lee, founder of the industrial-security company Dragos. Their answers are still the clearest map I know of the line between active defense and hacking back. In 2026 that line is being redrawn in law, including here in Germany.
