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Book
Review
Knapp, K.J. (Ed.) (2009). Cyber Security and Global
Information Assurance: Threat Analysis and Response Solutions.
Hershey, NY: Information Science Reference. 434 + xxii pages,
ISBN: 978-1-60566-326-5, US$195
Reviewed by Gary C.
Kessler
Gary Kessler Associates
Burlington, VT 05401
gck@garykessler.net
(first four paragraphs of
review)
I freely admit that this book was sent
to me by the publisher for the expressed purpose of my writing a
review and that I know several of the chapter authors. With that
disclosure out of the way, let me say that the book is well
worth the review (and I get to keep my review copy).
The preface to the book cites the 2003 publication of The
National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace by the White House, and
the acknowledgement by the U.S. government that our economy and
national security were fully dependent upon computers, networks,
and the telecommunications infrastructure. This may have come as
news to the general population but it was a long overdue public
statement to those of us in the industry. The FBI's InfraGard
program and the formation of the National Infrastructure
Protection Center (NIPC) pre-dated this report by at least a
half-dozen years, so the report was hardly earth shattering. And
the fact that the bulk of the telecom infrastructure is owned by
the private sector is a less advertized fact. Nonetheless,
reminding the community of these facts is always a Good Thing
and provides the raison d’ętre of this book.
The book is divided into four sections (18 chapters) that offer
a nice flow in discussing the broad topic of information
assurance (IA). It's important to note up front that this is not
a general IA textbook but contains 18 very specific treatises.
Section I, titled "Risk and Threat Assessment," contains five
chapters that lay the groundwork for understanding the concerns
of the information security community to our information assets
and resources. The first chapter describes the very interesting
topic of the underground black market for the exchange of lists
of software vulnerabilities and tools with which to exploit
those vulnerabilities. The next chapter describes an automated
approach to identifying threats to enterprise networks using
attack graphs. The following chapter discusses prevention,
detection, and mitigation of insider threats, which is possibly
the largest information security danger that we face. This is
followed by a chapter about a mathematical model for assessing
the efficacy of an organization's infosec infrastructure. The
last chapter of this section discusses the impact of information
terrorism and the asymmetric nature of Information Warfare. This
section of the book, even alone, would grab a reader's attention
to the problems at hand..
(continued)
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