Reviews of Computer Security 20 Things Every Employee Should Know, 2nd Ed, The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security Posted

The drought has ended. Amazon.com just posted my two newest reviews. First was Computer Security 20 Things Every Employee Should Know, 2nd Ed by Ben Rothke. I gave it three stars, but I would give the next edition higher ratings if Ben addresses my suggestions. From the review:

Ben Rothke's Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know, 2nd Ed, contains a great deal of sound advice for nontechnical employees. At least 10 tips could be eliminated by combining redundancies. I would reduce the list to the following topics:

(1) Beware malware, spyware, and phishing; (2) Protect your identity; (3) Protect the organization's data; (4) Choose sound passwords and protect them; (5) Use organization resources for authorized purposes; (6) Beware of social engineers; (7) Call the experts when things go wrong; (8) Protect laptops, PDAs, cell phones, and other mobile devices as you would corporate resources.

I also reviewed The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security by Andrew Conry-Murray and Vincent Weafer. I gave this book four stars. From the review:

The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security (TSGTHIS) is Symantec's latest offering in its new series of books published through Addison-Wesley. This is a very solid introductory desktop security book for home power users. This is not the book to give to your grandmother, unless she likes to tweak Windows or wants to understand differences between file infector and polymorphic viruses. With one caveat, I liked this book...

The book suffers one major flaw that robbed a star from my rating. The single most important defensive measure a home user can take is to not perform daily operations as a user with administrative privileges. Home users should not browse the Web, read email, chat in IM, write documents, or do much anything else using an admin account. Users should only assume admin level power when they need to install software or authorized Active X controls. This single defensive measure is not mentioned by TSGTHIS, but it has protected numerous customers and my family from thousands of client-side attacks.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This ain't funny ! It is a serious mistake.
7:38 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technical or pol
Read more