New book: “Beautiful Security”

Although most people don’t give security much attention until their personal or business systems are attacked, this thought-provoking anthology demonstrates that digital security is not only worth thinking about, it’s also a fascinating topic. Criminals succeed by exercising enormous creativity, and those defending against them must do the same.

In Beautiful Security, edited by Andy Oram and John Viega, today’s security experts describe bold and extraordinary methods used to secure computer systems in the face of ever-increasing threats.

The book features a collection of essays and insightful analyses by leaders such as Ben Edelman, Grant Geyer, John McManus, and a dozen others who have found unusual solutions for writing secure code, designing secure applications, addressing modern challenges such as wireless security and Internet vulnerabilities, and much more.

Among the book’s wide-ranging topics, you’ll learn how new and more aggressive security measures work–and where they will lead us. Topics include:

• The underground economy for personal information: how it works, the relationships among criminals, and some of the new ways they pounce on their prey
• How social networking, cloud computing, and other popular trends help or hurt our online security
• How metrics, requirements gathering, design, and law can take security to a higher measure
• The real, little-publicized history of PGP
• Go beyond the headlines, hype, and hearsay. With Beautiful Security , you’ll delve into the techniques, technology, ethics, and laws at the center of the biggest revolution in the history of network security. It’s a useful and far-reaching discussion you can’t afford to miss.

“This collection of thoughtful essays catapults the reader well beyond deceptively shiny security FUD toward the more subtle beauty of security done right. ‘Beautiful Security’ demonstrates the yin and the yang of security, and the fundamental creative tension between the spectacularly destructive and the brilliantly constructive.” – Gary McGraw, CTO of Cigital, author of Software Security and nine other books.