Inside the Security Mind: Making the Tough Decisions

"This is a really good book ... it spells out the motherhood and apple pie of information security in a highly readable way."

—Warwick Ford, CTO, VeriSign, Inc.

"An excellent security read! Breaks down a complex concept into a simple and easy-to-understand concept."

—Vivek Shivananda, President

• Redefine your organization's information security

• Learn to think and act like a top security guru!

• Understand the founding principles of security itself and make better decisions

• Make your security solutions more effective, easily manageable, and less costly!

Make smarter, more informed security decisions for your companyOrganizations today commit ever-increasing resources to information security, but are scarcely more secure than they were four or five years ago! By treating information security like an ordinary technological practice—that is, by throwing money, a handful of the latest technologies, and a lineup of gurus at the problem—they invariably wind up with expensive, but deeply flawed, solutions. The only way out of this trap is to change one's way of thinking about security: to grasp the reasoning, philosophy, and logic that underlie all successful security efforts.

In Inside the Security Mind: Making the Tough Decisions, security expert Kevin Day teaches you how to approach information security the way the top gurus do—as an art, rather than a collection of technologies. By applying this discipline, your solutions will be more secure and less burdensome in time, expense, and effort. The first part of the book explains the practice of breaking security decisions down into a set of simple rules. These rules may then be applied to make solid security decisions in almost any environment. In the second part, Day uses a series of practical examples to illustrate exactly how the discipline works in practice. Additional material covers:

• Designing an enterprise security plan, including perimeter/firewall and Internal defenses, application, system, and hardware security

• Ongoing security measures—recurring audits, vulnerability maintenance, logging and monitoring, and incident response, plus risk assessment

• Choosing between open source and proprietary solutions; and wired, wireless, and virtual private networks

This book is essential reading for anyone working to keep information secure. Technical and non-technical IT professionals alike can apply Day's concepts and strategies to become security gurus, while seasoned practitioners will benefit from the unique and effective presentation of the essential security practices.