Soft security

Soft security usually refers to security which protects something from harm in quiet and unobtrusive ways; often invisibly and after the fact, rather than with visible barriers before the fact. Soft security can refer to immediate security measures, such as silent burglar alarms or motion detectors, but often refers to more elaborate social security systems such as the moral network in a tightly-knit community such as a cluster of friends on a busy city street.

The term has gained widespread use in wiki communities, notably MeatballWiki. A quote from their page on :

The differentiation between soft security and was first made by Rasmusson and Jansson [Lars Rasmusson and Sverker Jansson. [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=304857&coll=portal&dl=ACM Simulated Social Control for Secure Internet Commerce] . "In Catherine Meadows, editor, Proceedings of the 1996 New Security Paradigms Workshop". ACM, 1996. ] who used the term hard security for traditional mechanisms like authentication and access control, and soft security forsocial control mechanisms.

Wikipedia documents are a typical example of soft security principles, using discussion pages, history, , in contrast to traditional document control mechanisms using workflow and authorization.

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