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Author: Bruce Schneier
ISBN : 0387026207
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Format: PDF
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Many of us, especially since 9/11, have become personally concerned about issues of security, and this is no surprise. Security is near the top of government and corporate agendas around the globe. Security-related stories appear on the front page everyday. How well though, do any of us truly understand what achieving real security involves?
In Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier invites us to take a critical look at not just the threats to our security, but the ways in which we're encouraged to think about security by law enforcement agencies, businesses of all shapes and sizes, and our national governments and militaries. Schneier believes we all can and should be better security consumers, and that the trade-offs we make in the name of security - in terms of cash outlays, taxes, inconvenience, and diminished freedoms - should be part of an ongoing negotiation in our personal, professional, and civic lives, and the subject of an open and informed national discussion.
With a well-deserved reputation for original and sometimes iconoclastic thought, Schneier has a lot to say that is provocative, counter-intuitive, and just plain good sense. He explains in detail, for example, why we need to design security systems that don't just work well, but fail well, and why secrecy on the part of government often undermines security. He also believes, for instance, that national ID cards are an exceptionally bad idea: technically unsound, and even destructive of security. And, contrary to a lot of current nay-sayers, he thinks online shopping is fundamentally safe, and that many of the new airline security measure (though by no means all) are actually quite effective. A skeptic of much that's promised by highly touted technologies like biometrics, Schneier is also a refreshingly positive, problem-solving force in the often self-dramatizing and fear-mongering world of security pundits.
Schneier helps the reader to understand the issues at stake, and how to best come to one's own conclusions, including the vast infrastructure we already have in place, and the vaster systems--some useful, others useless or worse--that we're being asked to submit to and pay for.
Bruce Schneier is the author of seven books, including Applied Cryptography (which Wired called "the one book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published") and Secrets and Lies (described in Fortune as "startlingly lively...¦[a] jewel box of little surprises you can actually use."). He is also Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., and publishes Crypto-Gram, one of the most widely read newsletters in the field of online security.
Books with free ebook downloads available Free Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. [Hardcover]
- Hardcover: 295 pages
- Publisher: Copernicus (May 4, 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0387026207
- ISBN-13: 978-0387026206
- Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 6.3 x 9.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.
Bruce's greatest strength is in the role of Evangelist -- he translates the complex aspects of security into a vocabulary suitable for common consumption. If you're a sociologist, a risk management officer, or a cultural psychologist, you'll be familiar with a lot of the upstream references from which Bruce draws his examples. Conversely, if you're working in an office where "solving that security problem" is one of your many tasks, you won't have the time or inclination to dig out the esoteric sources. Consider this book as an alternative, far less onerous choice.The book is easy reading -- it flows quickly and keeps returning to a common set of themes. These are set against many contexts so you're sure to find something familiar. You won't find any math or greek notation in here, to the disappointment of "Applied Cryptography" die-hards but the relief of everyone else.
The underlying message, seeing beyond the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) propagated by mass media and the government, is a key one to understanding why it's OK to question this hyper-security-conscious world we find ourselves in. Airline security is an arena familiar to most business travelers, and we as passengers are expected not only to accept increasingly invasive measures, but welcome them without hesitation. Bruce teaches us how to evaluate the efficacy of these schemes both individually and in the aggregate. The results will surprise all but the most cynical among you.
That said, this is not the textbook of a conspiracy theorist. Bruce willingly admits that improving security correctly is a worthwhile pursuit, and even teaches us how to do it. You won't find the rantings of an ill-informed libertarian crackpot.