Defending Your Digital Assets Against Hackers, Crackers, Spies and Thieves

Security has become the most crucial issue facing Information Technology today. Malicious viruses and expensive hacks increasingly make headlines as they damage data and cost organizations millions of dollars in repair. Hackers have broken into the computer systems of banks, Fortune 500 companies, the U. S. Senate, the FBI, and many others; analysts with IDC claim that 50 % of all networks are attacked at some point, many from within, and only 3% of those attacks are ever discovered.

Even though the accessibility of the Internet makes it a security risk, individuals and groups must be able to connect to it if they want to be competitive. While there is often no way of knowing who else is logged on to your network and what their motives are, you can use security tools and procedures to protect your IT resources. Nichols, the founder of COMSEC solutions, has extensive experience keeping networks safe and showing IT professionals how to prevent data from being stolen or sabotaged. Co-authors Daniel and Julie Ryan, also experts in computer security, assist in presenting to readers the range of threats and the available security options.

Defending Your Digital Assets is written for the manager and policy maker, to assist professionals responsible for protecting their organization's information assets. Anyone working with information security (INFOSEC)-from CIOs and operations directors to programmers and database managers-can benefit from this detailed examination of IT security.

Beginning with an overview of security threats to commercial and government systems, Defending Your Digital Assets goes on to show what can be done about them, first explaining the theoretical foundations of INFOSEC technology, subsequently detailing practical
INFOSEC countermeasures such as cryptography, public key systems, access control, digital signatures, identification, authorization, and VPNs. Nichols also explains what administrators need to know when they've uncovered a security attack.
Readers of this book can learn what security tools are available to them, how to organize and manage a network in a manner that reduces the risk of attack, and what steps they can take if the network does come under attack from a computer criminal.