In any event, I will concede that my analysis of SolarWinds is an educated guess on my part, but it is hardly relevant to my overall points in any event. Even if SolarWinds is the dumbest most incompetent organization ever it does not detract from my other point which is that even the "best" is abysmal, so even if they were doing the best that is practically achieved in a working environment it still would not result in a meaningful difference. So, the problem is not actually that SolarWinds was chosen, it is that nobody else would be able to solve it either which is a far bigger problem. It means you need to come up with a novel solution to an unsolved problem, not just use something already known.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/macos-high-sierra-hack-root/
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/the-h...
Still even with that in mind one should perhaps never assume that such things are less important.
If what was reported by Reuters is true, SolarWinds had huge holes in its security. None of the companies I've worked for on recent years would keep a FTP server containing critical data on a public network with a guessable password: "A security researcher told Reuters he warned the IT firm SolarWinds in 2019 that its “solarwinds123” password for its update server could be accessed by anyone." https://www.businessinsider.com.au/solarwinds-warned-weak-12...