Schneier on Security

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really informative look at what helps members of society act rationally and allows society to function. Schneier explains many of the common models of trust that exist at different layers of society and provides examples of each. I would have preferred to have the examples be a little more in depth and most of them were covered at a very high level. I guess that would make this a good jumping off point to other books which go in depth on any of the failures mentioned in the book. Overall I really enjoyed the book it was a very easy read and I recommend it…

I swear I didn’t read sidebernie‘s latest before I decided to post this….  Actually what happened was I got a deeply discounted and autographed book some time ago on the condition that I post a review about it somewhere.  And it’s been nagging at me (partly due to the fact that I left the book out on my desk to remind me and I keep knocking it off—oops, sorry) and I finally got some time, so here goes.  Hope there’s more than two of us here, or it won’t be very much publicity for the author!  Anyway….

I first discovered Bruce Schneier when I got interested in mathematical cryptography, with his book “Applied Cryptography”.  When that book came out and for many years afterwards, it was *the* book to read if you wanted to know how cryptography works.  Although Schneier is still considered an expert on the technical side of cryptography and is still designing ciphers, he has gradually broadened his attention over the years, first into computer security as a whole, then into security against terrorism, and most recently into security in general.  His most recent book, …

One of the perils of buying a book written by a blogger one reads regularly is that the book may be little more than a rehashing of their blog, with insufficient original material to warrant the time investment. Sometimes it’s still nice to support them financially, but it may not make sense to read the book. I’ve been following Schneier’s blog for years (as should anyone with an interest in security), including through the entire process of writing Liars and Outliers, and was a bit worried that might be the case here. Thankfully, I can reassure any other worried potential readers that is not the case. This is substantial new material establishing a firm framework for thinking about incentives and controls in any society or organization…

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Bruce Schneier and his work. So when he offered readers a chance to buy his book at a discount in exchange for a review, I jumped at the chance. This review fulfills the obligation that I took on.

Every once in a while, you learn something that recontextualizes the world for you, and you start looking at everything through a new lens. After reading Liars and Outliers, I’ve been framing the systems I interact with in terms of cooperation, defection and the pressures applied to prevent defection.

At a certain abstract level, many human actions taken at large are much like Prisoners’ Dilemmas (or other game-theoretic games where the global optimum is at odds with personal optima). When you go to the grocery store, you (along with everybody else) has a choice between paying for your goods—cooperating—or walking out—defecting. If you pay, it’s good for everybody, because it helps ensure that the grocery store will continue to serve the area, but if you walk out, you get free groceries, but the costs are passed onto other customers. If too many people steal, the store might close. The fact that most people don’t steal groceries allows stores to continue operating. These defectors, as Schneier calls people who make the selfish choice over the societally optimal choice, are the titular …

Tl;dr An enormously important book about understanding and optimizing security in the 21st century.

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. I don’t know Bruce Schneier, and he certainly doesn’t know me. Even so, when he announced a heavily discounted signed edition of Liars and Outliers he was effectively testing the main hypothesis of the book: That in any society it is reasonable to uphold a non-zero level of trust even in complete strangers:

• Schneier trusted 100 (or at least many enough to make a net gain) random strangers to reciprocate the offer by writing and publishing a review of the book…

Several weeks ago Bruce Schneier asked his readership if they wanted to make a deal: Buy a signed copy of Liars and Outliers at a substantially reduced price in return for writing a review. I took him up on that offer, as did several others. While my review has been delayed, I wanted to ensure that I was able to absorb (I think I have) what Mr. Schneier has to say about a topic that is a departure from his usual subjects. Additionally, I wanted to make some attempt to apply his construct to the concept of information risk management.

Liars and Outliers…

I’ve long been a fan of Bruce Schneier as evidenced by my collection of his books (Secrets and Lies and Beyond Fear). So was excited to finally get my hands on the latest book Liars and Outliers from him.

Most of us experience “security” from one of two vantage points: as the threatened or as the threat. The power held over us by those who peddle, prescribe, and implement security can be—let’s just say it can chafe a bit. Bruce Schneier is known for lampooning the wasteful and invasive security measures in our airports, warning of the dangers posed by unchecked surveillance, and blogging about squids. In Liars and Outliers, though, he offers a paradigm that could (should) transform how we view security.

The core idea is that societies require trust to function. Societies exert various kinds of forces—moral, reputational, institutional, and security—on their members to encourage behavior that induces trust and trustworthiness. Most often, security becomes necessary as societies grow too large for the other mechanisms to be effective. So the ultimate goal of security is to increase trust, and it does so not on its own but as a supplement to these other mechanisms…

I’ve been a Bruce Schneier fan for years. I read his blog often enough that I don’t feel the need to read his books. But then he offered a discount on a signed edition of his latest book– with the one stipulation that I write a review of it. So here’s the review.

A lot of brilliant thinkers tend to get stuck in their own perspective. There are plenty of mathematical geniuses who can’t contemplate the implications of their ideas. Plenty of programmers who can’t understand why users don’t recognize the brilliance of their user interfaces. Bruce Schneier isn’t one of them. His rose to fame with …

Full disclosure: I’m a pretty big Bruce Schneier fan and I did get this book at a discount for promising to review it.  This is me fulfilling my end of the promise.

Schneier is a security guy.  Not this kind, more about security in technology.  He’ll be the first to point out your security flaws, tell you how terrible your password is, and publicize a companies mishandling of said password.  This book is different.  It’s a lot less about technology and security and more about the psychology of trust in humans. (Don’t worry, there’s still some TSA bashing on pg. 197)…

Anthropology was one of my college majors. I preferred physical to cultural anthropology. The history of primates, as told by fragments of bones or teeth, was more interesting to me than was the glue that held societies together. I preferred learning about Zinjanthropus boisei to reading about the customs of the Yanamami people of the Amazon rainforest or the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari Desert.

I was unenthusiastic about cultural anthropology until I read the monograph, Deciphering a Meal, by the anthropologist Mary Douglas. The article dissected meal rituals and their purposes. She looked at how being invited over for drinks meant something different than sharing leftovers at the kitchen table. There is a lengthy discussion about kosher rituals. The article had a profound effect on my thinking, particularly about human behavior…

I want to tell you that this book is amazing and I loved every moment of it. It’s smart, I agree with most of what he says, and I very much appreciate Bruce Schneier’s candidness when he’s making statements more on gut instinct and doesn’t yet have full scientific work to back it up, or the work he has isn’t actually very convincing. He could have written a compelling book without those admissions (and many authors of pop non-fiction do exactly that) but I found his insights much more interesting when he acknowledges where they’re more speculation than anything else. The anecdotes, stories and analogies are interesting and work with the ideas contained therein, and the applications to social structures and laws and whatnot were clear and convincing…

I read this book thanks to a wonderful suggestion from one of my regular readers. Liars and Outliers is a book written by Bruce Schneier, a security expert who also has an excellent blog Schneier on Security.

Overall, I found Liars and Outliers to be a fun read about how to analyze trust. I found the book particularly interesting because Schneier refers to many game theory models. I highly recommend the book to anyone that wants to see how game theory models can be applied to thinking about the area of security.

The book was a pleasant read, and I finished it in a couple of weeks, reading a couple of chapters each night. While Schneier’s book is philosophical and full of ideas, numerous real-world examples and well-organized writing make the book a pleasurable read…

Bruce Schneier and I have satisfied a market need of journalists for a number of years; namely relatively informed people willing to go on the record with opposing views about the efficacy of TSA activities. My recent Wall Street Journal piece has led some to wonder how far apart Bruce and I are on TSA security issues. We generally agree on principles and strategy but diverge on issues that are influenced by operational or intelligence considerations, about which Bruce would have no reason to be aware. Bruce might say that I hide behind the secrecy shield and I might wish to retort that just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean it is stupid. But enough, there is more to security than checkpoints…

A new book from Bruce Schneier—the man who coined the term security theater that has since made its way into the mainstream lexicon.

In short—Liars & Outliers is good—really good. Schneier comes from a computer security background, but he has gone much bigger picture with this book. Fundamentally it’s a book about trust—why we trust each other, what mechanisms we have in society to ensure that we do trust each other, and how these fail sometimes.

It’s a book that introduces a new framework—paradigm even—for thinking about why we trust each other and what security measures we want or need in our society…

Bruce has touched upon the 16 interdisciplinary and inter-related subject areas (answers can be found in the 16×16 matrix below) that make up the core of his new book. His new book is all about TRUST and SECURITY. Liars & Outliers is an excellent read with just over 16 chapters and a clear focus on how humans developed the trust they needed to survive over the centuries.

The book poses several ideas that may seem new to us security professionals such as Dunbar’s numbers, and the Red Queen effect, and the Hawk-Dove game. Wonderfully explained in Liars and Outliers is the model of trust based on societal, moral, reputational and institutional pressures that security systems need to address to be effective…

Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive provides a powerful survey on trust, cooperation, and the evolution of a social system. It considers how traditional trust mechanisms have worked in the past, and how new technology is challenging these traditional functions that create or question trust. Liars & Outliers considers cooperation and social stability, discussing new social cues involved in creating trust and considering how security has come to substitute methods for trust. Any social issues collection as well as libraries strong in business and internet endeavors will find this a powerful pick…

“Liars and Outliers” is a book by well-known security author Bruce Schneier. It talks about the role and mechanisms of trust in society, and how these have evolved over time as we have scaled our civilization. See the author’s own take on the big story.

It used to be easy. Humans lived in tribes and everyone knew everyone else. A combination of moral and reputational pressures was in action to keep people in check. In societies, there is often a conflict between personal and group interest, and these pressures make sure that most people act in group interest most of the time…

I recently read Bruce Schneier’s latest book – Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive.

It’s a good book, of potential interest not just to technology people, but also to anyone wishing to understand more about the way the world works. Schneier uses a wealth of examples to demonstrate that without implicit trust towards pretty much everyone around us, society falls apart.

Reading this book convinced me once more that calls for more surveillance and a more extensive police state must be resisted. The underlying assumption (that crime can be brought down to 0% if only we give up most of our liberties) is a false one. Schneier convincingly argues that the cost of wiping out crime is too high for society – we should therefore stop the hysteria about “total security” and get on with our lives…

When I was asked to review this book I was very pleased as I was able to get away from my day job of researching and analyzing new malware and spam. I’m not a book reviewer but here’s what I thought of his book.

Bruce Schneier’s new book, Liars & Outliers, is subtitled “Enabling the trust that society needs to thrive”, and the word ‘society’ is key here.

Unlike many of the books that Schneier has written, this is not a technical book but it does describe—clearly and concisely—the problems that we, the computer security professionals, provide technical solutions for…

Over the years an incredible amount of ink has been spilled on the concept of trust. What it is, why it’s important, how to achieve it, how to keep it, how to spread it around the Internet like margarine on toast. The difficulty in all this is trust is subjective. Trust is a human measure, inseparable from personal judgment, custom, culture, and law.

Trust, as the author states, “is relative, fluid, and multidimensional.” And Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers is a far flung and wide-ranging study of trust touching on anthropology, sociology, economics political philosophy, social theories behavioral economics, rational choice theory, bounded rationality theory, and contract theory…