Personal Cybersecurity

Book excerpt: Discover the most prevalent cyber threats against individual users of all kinds of computing devices. This book teaches you the defensive best practices and state-of-the-art tools available to you to repel each kind of threat. Personal Cybersecurity addresses the needs of individual users at work and at home. This book covers personal cybersecurity for all modes of personal computing whether on consumer-acquired or company-issued devices: desktop PCs, laptops, mobile devices, smart TVs, WiFi and Bluetooth peripherals, and IoT objects embedded with network-connected sensors. In all these modes, the frequency, intensity, and sophistication of cyberattacks that put individual users at risk are increasing in step with accelerating mutation rates of malware and cybercriminal delivery systems. Traditional anti-virus software and personal firewalls no longer suffice to guarantee personal security. Users who neglect to learn and adopt the new ways of protecting themselves in their work and private environments put themselves, their associates, and their companies at risk of inconvenience, violation, reputational damage, data corruption, data theft, system degradation, system destruction, financial harm, and criminal disaster. This book shows what actions to take to limit the harm and recover from the damage. Instead of laying down a code of "thou shalt not" rules that admit of too many exceptions and contingencies to be of much practical use, cloud expert Marvin Waschke equips you with the battlefield intelligence, strategic understanding, survival training, and proven tools you need to intelligently assess the security threats in your environment and most effectively secure yourself from attacks. Through instructive examples and scenarios, the author shows you how to adapt and apply best practices to your own particular circumstances, how to automate and routinize your personal cybersecurity, how to recognize security breaches and act swiftly to seal them, and how to recover losses and restore functionality when attacks succeed. What You'll Learn Discover how computer security works and what it can protect us from See how a typical hacker attack works Evaluate computer security threats to the individual user and corporate systems Identify the critical vulnerabilities of a computer connected to the Internet Manage your computer to reduce vulnerabilities to yourself and your employer Discover how the adoption of newer forms of biometric authentication affects you Stop your router and other online devices from being co-opted into disruptive denial of service attacks Who This Book Is For Proficient and technically knowledgeable computer users who are anxious about cybercrime and want to understand the technology behind both attack and defense but do not want to go so far as to become security experts. Some of this audience will be purely home users, but many will be executives, technical managers, developers, and members of IT departments who need to adopt personal practices for their own safety and the protection of corporate systems. Many will want to impart good cybersecurity practices to their colleagues. IT departments tasked with indoctrinating their users with good safety practices may use the book as training material.