Cybersecurity 101

Right now you are in a battle to protect yourself and your family from hackers and there is no white knight on horseback galloping to your rescue. Most of the so called 'experts' in the yellow pages are upstarts who, in most cases, know just as much as you about the problem but compensate by using virus scan programs that offer the illusion of expertise. Most computers have boilerplate antivirus and perhaps some sort of firewall but this is hardly enough to thwart malicious hackers from breaching your system. The weakest link in cybersecurity is the human factor. You'll get an email that looks like it's from your boss or child's school, you'll click the link and in microseconds your computer is contaminated with a virus that incapacitates your PC and you realize you've just been Pwned! Not all hackers are bad but those who have malicious intent are typically categorized as script kiddies, hacktivists, mercenaries or state sponsored. Each group carries with it a different motivation, target to breach and data it seeks to exfiltrate. Script kiddies will typically wreak sporadic techno-chaos using cut and paste scripting methods from content they find on deep web hacker forums. Hacktivists usually target organizations of affiliates who are aligned with other organizations and affiliates that this category of hacker-activists deem ethically or economically corrupt or sided with the wrong side of group ideology. Mercenary hackers will typically be part of a criminal enterprise who seeks financial gain for their activity and can work for crime syndicates or state sponsors. And finally state sponsored hackers will work for a government and target specific organizations and data for espionage and political motivation. These organizations, though diverse in technological capability and motivation are always quick to prey on the ill-prepared and vulnerable and in many cases will pass over those with solid cybersecurity hygiene for easier targets. Solid cyber security hygiene consists of a multipronged strategy. Through the cyber-knowledge baseline you'll acquire from reading this two volume series, you'll be able to create a virtual labyrinth fortress around you, your family and business. The more difficult you make it for malicious hackers to invade your space; the less likely you are to be hacked. The intention of this series is to minimize the tech jargon that typically inhibits one's ability to intellectually digest the topic of cybersecurity and replace it with short, easy to read, simple to digest 'how-to' chapters. This book series has been authored to intentionally highlight the basics that are most relevant in the current evolutionary condition of cybersecurity in order to have the most impact on the real life vulnerabilities faced by the reader. You will 'Quickly' learn how to discover potential insider cyber threats in your workplace, how to thwart cloud computing threats, dealing with advanced persistent threats, how to respond to Botnet attacks, protecting against mobile device and wireless network attacks and much more. The knowledge you'll gain from this book series will help you protect your PC and data from hackers while simultaneously defining tech language that will act as instructional building blocks in these rapidly evolving cyber-times.