Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies - Second Edition

By : Tim Rains
3 (2)
Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies - Second Edition

3 (2)
By: Tim Rains

Overview of this book

Tim Rains is Microsoft's former Global Chief Security Advisor and Amazon Web Services’ former Global Security Leader for Worldwide Public Sector. He has spent the last two decades advising private and public sector organizations all over the world on cybersecurity strategies. Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies, Second Edition builds upon the success of the first edition that has helped so many aspiring CISOs, and cybersecurity professionals understand and develop effective data-driven cybersecurity strategies for their organizations. In this edition, you’ll examine long-term trends in vulnerability disclosures and exploitation, regional differences in malware infections and the socio-economic factors that underpin them, and how ransomware evolved from an obscure threat to the most feared threat in cybersecurity. You’ll also gain valuable insights into the roles that governments play in cybersecurity, including their role as threat actors, and how to mitigate government access to data. The book concludes with a deep dive into modern approaches to cybersecurity using the cloud. By the end of this book, you will have a better understanding of the threat landscape, how to recognize good Cyber Threat Intelligence, and how to measure the effectiveness of your organization's cybersecurity strategy.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
13
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14
Index

The Pursuit of Happiness

Before we dive into the roles that governments play in cybersecurity and why they play those roles, I think it’s helpful context to review the reasons governments exist in the first place. Without this context, I’ve seen some cybersecurity professionals struggle to understand what government means to their security programs and to the industry more broadly.

Political philosophers have pontificated on the purpose of government for centuries and I certainly won’t try to duplicate their work here. Social contract theory helps set the stage for the direction I want to take you. Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan, first published in 1651, describes a time before governments and the rights they bestow existed as a “state of nature” where every person had a natural right to everything. That is, there was no private property - property was yours as long as you could prevent others from taking it away from you. Subsequently, there was...