Kill It with Fire

Tightly coupled and complex systems are prone to failure because the coupling produces cascading effects, and the complexity makes the direction and course of those cascades impossible to predict. If your goal is to reduce failures or minimize security risks, your best bet is to start by evaluating your system on those two characteristics: Where are things tightly coupled, and where are things complex? Your goal should not be to eliminate all complexity and all coupling; there will be trade-offs in each specific instance.