Defending Your Digital Assets Against Hackers, Crackers, Spies,...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 848 pages
• Published by: McGraw-Hill Companies January 5, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0072122854
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0072122855
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 2.2 inches
• Weighs: 3.2 pounds

Product Review
Computer security holds a unique position among information technology disciplines. Because threats to systems are so numerous and varied, you can spend years studying them (and general strategies for counteracting them) before you start to work with specific security tools. Defending Your Digital Assets Against Hackers, Crackers, Spies and Thieves is a guide to computer security that remains one step back from security software itself. In place of specific how-to information, readers learn about the motives of online attackers and the strategies they use to gain unauthorized access to systems and data, plus overarching concepts like public-key cryptography. They also find out about defensive and forensic strategies for preventing attacks and limiting their potency when they occur.

The authors of this book--a cryptographer, a couple of mathematicians, and a handful of others--employ a very text-heavy presentation style that's best suited to attentive study. The prose tends to be dense and a bit academic, and certain conceptual diagrams approach inscrutability. Still, security is a complicated matter, and a simplistic treatment wouldn't be as useful. It's possible to scan the index for a topic that interests you--keystroke biometrics, say--and find a definition and a statement of pros and cons. You'll also find endnote references to more specialized works but little mention of software products that implement the ideas the authors explain. --David Wall

Topics covered: Computer and network security, including risk management, security policy, cryptography, access control, authentication, biometrics, actions to be taken during an attack, and case studies of hacking and information warfare.

Product Description
Learn to stop digital espionage-before it happens! Manage your way to security in an increasingly interconnected world. Network data has become increasingly valuable in today's public and private sectors, as has become painfully clear to those in Fortune 500 companies and to those in top branches of government who store information digitally. But exactly how safe is the informaton that is accessible from a network? According to the expert authors of Defending Your Digital Assets Against Hackers, Crackers, Spies & Thieves and RSA Security, the most trusted name in e-security, NO data is safe. In fact, digital espionage, theft and destruction occur every day, and most attacks go undetected until it is too late. This groundbreaking new work discusses the growing vulnerabilities due to interconnectivity and the importance of protecting digital information. It offers detailed explanations of how and why attacks in progress, and quickly recover business operations. This is the first title from RSA Press, the new publishing group from RSA Security. RSA Security helps organizations build secure, trusted foundations for e-business through its two-factor authentication, encryption and public key management systems.

Reader Reviews
The recent Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that crippled AMAZON.com, eBay, CNN and other major sites highlights the need for a concerted effort to protect our networked data. "Defending Your Digital Assets Against Hackers, Crackers, Spies and Thieves" recognizes the value of network data in our public and private sectors and presents a blueprint for its defense against attacks effecting availability, confidentiality, integrity and authenticity. It advocates twelve building blocks to improve security: building the right organization, performing risk analyses, evaluating levels of impact, applying practical countermeasures, mandating vital backups, using anti-virus / intrusion detection software, establishing employee training and security programs, performing audits and continuously monitoring operations, staying on top of and reporting incidents, developing an alert system and triage responses, and finally launching a DoS attack on our own computers to determine the level of damage and potential loss of customers or revenue. "Defending Your Digital Assets Against Hackers, Crackers, Spies and Thieves" is unique in its coverage of the growing vulnerabilities due to interconnectivity and the importance of protecting digital information. It offers the responsible security manager detailed explanations of who does it, how and why attacks occur and gives due diligence advice on how to prevent future attacks, detect attacks in progress, and quickly recover business operations. Although NO data is 100% safe, the authors' recommendations will help organizations to maintain appropriate security levels, to provide resistance to penetration and ultimately to mitigate damage from attacks.