Science of decentralized security

In security, our concern is typically with securing a particular network, or eliminating security holes in a particular piece of software. These are important, but they miss the fact that being secure is fundamentally about security of all constituent parts, rather that any single part in isolation. In principle, if we can control all the pieces of a system, we can secure all possible channels of attack. Typically, system and security design of various components are performed by different agents, having varying and often conflicting interests.