Memory-safe languages can eliminate broad classes of vulnerabilities, but “rewrite it in Rust” is not a strategy. Most organizations need a risk-based roadmap that prevents new unsafe code, prioritizes security-critical components, supports interoperability, and manages migration without destabilizing essential services.
Executive takeaway
Adopt memory safety as an engineering direction and procurement expectation. Start where memory-safety defects create the greatest exposure: network-facing parsers, privileged components, authentication, cryptography, and widely reused libraries. Measure the reduction of unsafe attack surface, not lines rewritten.
A practical roadmap
- Inventory security-critical software and identify memory-unsafe languages and dependencies.
- Stop growth by requiring memory-safe languages for suitable new components and documenting exceptions.
- Prioritize modules by privilege, exposure, exploit history, reuse, and consequence.
- Use well-defined interfaces to replace components incrementally rather than committing automatically to full rewrites.
- Strengthen remaining unsafe code with compiler hardening, sanitizers, fuzzing, isolation, and rapid patching.
- Invest in developer training, build systems, libraries, observability, and operational support.
- Set procurement requirements for supplier roadmaps and evidence.
Where Rust fits
Rust is a strong choice for systems software that needs performance and memory safety, but it is not the only memory-safe option and it does not eliminate logic, authorization, concurrency, supply-chain, or unsafe-code risks. Choose a language based on the component, ecosystem, team, and operational environment.
Shawn’s perspective
The goal is not language fashion. It is structural risk reduction. A credible roadmap changes defaults, concentrates effort on high-leverage components, and acknowledges that legacy systems will require compensating controls for years.