News in the Category "Book Reviews"
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Book Review: Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
Secrets & Lies provides interested readers with a guide for understanding the environment in which computer security must reside, the technical tools for implementing security, and a strategic approach for that security. Although the book was published in 2000, most of what Schneier presents is relevant today. The paperback edition includes a preface by the author addressing the time withstanding themes of security in light of the attacks of 9/11. The author breaks the text into three sections: The Landscape, Technologies, and Strategies.
The first section of the book provides the context in which security is discussed. In the introductory chapter, Schneier sets the scene by listing security events, software vulnerabilities, and website defacements that made the news in March 2000. In this chapter, the author argues, “…the reason that it is so hard to secure a complex system like the Internet is, basically, because it’s a complex system.” In the following four chapters, the author describes digital threats, attacks, adversaries, and security needs. Schneier articulates the ways in which digital security is different from other types of security. He then gives attack scenarios ranging from denial of service attacks, to surveillance, to legal attacks. Adversaries are categorized as lone criminals, the press, organized crime, the police, terrorists, national intelligence organizations and info-warriors. Finally, in this section, Schneier describes security needs in terms of privacy, anonymity, authenticity, and integrity…
Book Notes: Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World
It seems like a good deal: the sign says that if the cashier fails to give a receipt you get your purchase free. Who knows? Maybe you track your expenses or you need the receipt for a reimbursement. Plus, it never hurts to have a shot at something free.
Actually, Bruce Schneier writes, the offer is a clever security maneuver. The store’s owner wants to make sure the cashier rings up sales, and generating a receipt for the customer also creates an internal register receipt. The offer enlists the customer as a security agent—not receiving a receipt means the customer will ask for reimbursement and the manager or owner will be notified that the cashier did not ring up the sale…
Books: Schneier's Beyond Fear; O'Reilly's Network Security; Global Whistleblowing
Excerpt
Here are some recently released top-quality books:
Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security In An Uncertain World, by Bruce Schneier. Schneier continues proving himself a leading thinker on security issues, in part because he continues to evolve from an expert who first approached security as a techno-centrist to one who now sees security as a process involving a broader set of factors, including power, agenda, bureaucracy and people. A goal of the latest book is to take the lessons that Schneier has learned in his computer security work and apply them to other security concerns, like protecting the nation from terrorist attacks, or protecting homes from burglars…
Review: Beyond Fear
The subtitle, “Thinking about security in an uncertain world”, describes this book accurately. Schneier is a security consultant, offering a five-step approach to assess the merits of measures proposed to meet a perceived threat.
- What assets are you trying to protect?
- What are the threats to those assets?
- How well do the measures mitigate these risks?
- What other risks do these measures cause?
- What costs and trade-offs are involved?
His main theme is the threat from terrorism, exemplified by the attacks in the USA on September 11th, 2001, but he also discusses (for example) how householders can protect against intruders, travelers can best guard their possessions or users defend against credit card fraud…
REVIEW: Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier
It is instructive to view this book in light of another recent publication. Marcus Ranum, in “The Myth of Homeland Security” (cf. BKMYHLSC.RVW) [See Rob’s review in RISKS-23.02 and Marcus’s response in RISKS-23.14. PGN] complains that the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is making mistakes, but provides only tentative and unlikely solutions. Schneier shows how security should work, and does work, presenting basic concepts in lay terms with crystal clarity. Schneier does not tell you how to prepare a security system as such, but does illustrate what goes on in the decision-making process…
Book Reviews: Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear
When one becomes more than an expert in an area, he or she generally begins to take a philosophical and abstract view of the subject and gains an ability to explain the essence of the subject in simplistic layman terms. That, in short, would describe Bruce Schneier’s book Beyond Fear.
It’s a question many of us need to ask ourselves. Are we really at risk? Or are we just afraid? Schneier provides us with hundreds of small examples repeatedly emphasizing the need to take another look at our reactions to the recent global security threats. Coming from an expert in security, and cryptologist, the book attempts to wash away the possibility of taking a standard approach to managing security. He dispels the notion that security is only for experts and convincingly proves that anyone can understand security…
Book Review: Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World
Security is a tax on the honest. Schneier, in his book’s last chapter, fittingly titled Security Demystified, explains that in a world of honorable and law abiding citizens our lives would be a lot simpler. Unfortunately, this is not the case: during our life we are constantly facing dangers and risks and often have to evaluate complex tradeoffs that involve the safety of ourselves and the people we love.
For thousands of years the planning of security was conducted by specialists working on isolated domains like defense, banking, or civil aviation. Security decisions, good or (often) bad, were not publicized and the general public was kept in the dark regarding important security tradeoffs and weaknesses. Advances in information and networking technology have resulted in immensely increased requirements for secure applications and associated algorithms and protocols to conduct e-commerce, store private data, and communicate on the open internet. As a result, a new generation of security researchers started working in an open environment of scientific discourse and exchange, publishing their results in the open literature and communicating across previously isolated domain boundaries. These efforts have made information security an important element of computer science with a systematized body of knowledge and accepted practices. Bruce Schneier, a respected member of the information security community, in his book …
Review of Beyond Fear
Bruce Schneier is perhaps the best example of why IT security professionals are “eating the lunch” of physical security managers in some corporations. He thinks creatively, he expresses himself logically, and he has cultivated the ear of people high on the corporate food chain. His latest book will be food for thought for security professionals.
Beyond Fear is organized into three sections: “Sensible Security,” “How Security Works,” and “The Game of Security.” The first section introduces three of Schneier’s core concepts: that all security involves trade-offs, that trade-offs are subjective, and that they depend on power and agenda…
Beyond Fear a Security Primer for Troubled Minds
It’s a rare security book that can raise awareness without resorting to sensationalism, but Bruce Schneier’s recent title Beyond Fear is one of them. It covers the theory behind both good and bad security practices, though it’s not a manual. It does not explain how to make whatever you wish to defend more secure, but it will help you to think clearly about how to do that.
The book clearly defines the essential concepts and basic practices behind security in all areas of life. Indeed, computers and networks hardly come up. It’s the universal principles that Schneier is concerned with here, and he illustrates them with numerous everyday examples from the airport to the ATM to the local supermarket…
Beyond Fear into Reason
Bruce Schneier has been one of my heroes for many years, not least because of the clarity of his thought and the crispness of his writing. Readers of this column have seen references in the past to his free monthly Crypto-Gram newsletter, and I hope you have subscribed to that always-worthwhile publication.
In 2000, Schneier published a groundbreaking primer for non-nerds called Secrets & Lies in which he confronted many misunderstandings and outright myths about security in the digital realm. In 2003, he continued his educational efforts with …
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.