Cybersecurity: What Everyone Needs to Know

Front Cover
A generation ago, "cyberspace" was just a term from science fiction, used to describe the nascent network of computers linking a few university labs. Today, our entire modern way of life, from communication to commerce to conflict, fundamentally depends on the Internet. And the cybersecurity issues that result challenge literally everyone: politicians wrestling with everything from cybercrime to online freedom; generals protecting the nation from new forms of attack, while planning new cyberwars; business executives defending firms from once unimaginable threats, and looking to make money off of them; lawyers and ethicists building new frameworks for right and wrong. Most of all, cybersecurity issues affect us as individuals. We face new questions in everything from our rights and responsibilities as citizens of both the online and real world to simply how to protect ourselves and our families from a new type of danger. And yet, there is perhaps no issue that has grown so important, so quickly, and that touches so many, that remains so poorly understood.

In Cybersecurity and CyberWar: What Everyone Needs to Know , New York Times best-selling author P. W. Singer and noted cyber expert Allan Friedman team up to provide the kind of easy-to-read, yet deeply informative resource book that has been missing on this crucial issue of 21st century life. Written in a lively, accessible style, filled with engaging stories and illustrative anecdotes, the book is structured around the key question areas of cyberspace and its security: how it all works, why it all matters, and what can we do? Along the way, they take readers on a tour of the important (and entertaining) issues and characters of cybersecurity, from the "Anonymous" hacker group and the Stuxnet computer virus to the new cyber units of the Chinese and U.S. militaries. Cybersecurity and CyberWar: What Everyone Needs to Know is the definitive account on the subject for us all, which comes not a moment too soon.

What Everyone Needs to Know is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

 

Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
Part I HOW IT ALL WORKS
12
Part II WHY IT MATTERS
67
Part III WHAT CAN WE DO?
166
CONCLUSIONS
247
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
257
NOTES
259
GLOSSARY
293
INDEX
301
Copyright

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About the author (2014)

Peter Warren Singer graduated with a BA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and earned his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University. Previous career experiences include working for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, the Balkans Task Force in the U.S. Department of Defense, and the International Peace Academy. He also served as the Defense Policy Task Force coordinator for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Singer is the Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and was the youngest scholar named a Senior Fellow by the Institution. He has written the following books about contemporary warfare: Corporate Warriors, Children at War, and Wired for War. Corporate Warriors, about private companies providing services to the military, was named best book of the year by the American Political Science Association. Children at War, which examines the role of child soldiers, was recognized as the 2006 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book of the Year Award. Wired for War became a New York Times bestseller in the first week of its release and focuses on current technologies being used in warfare, including robotics. Singer is a frequent consultant and commentator and has written numerous articles for major publications including the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and World Policy Journal, as well as spoken on the radio and appeared on television.