Preface

This book is for all those cyber security professionals who seek to know the truth behind the history of cyber warfare and are working to secure their infrastructure and personnel for the future. The aim of this book is to cover the topics around cyber warfare tools, tactics, and strategies.

Who this book is for

This book is for any engineer, leader, or professional with either a responsibility for cyber security within their organizations, or an interest in working in this ever-growing field. In particular, CISOs, cyber security leadership, blue team personnel, red team operators, strategic defense planners, executives in cyber security, and cyber security operations personnel should benefit from the insights and perspectives offered in this book.

What this book covers

Chapter 1: A Brief History of Cyber Threats and the Emergence of the APT Designator – This chapter will dive into the real history of cyber threats and their emergence in the space and provide some background on nation state APT designations.

Chapter 2: The Perimeter Is Dead – In this chapter, we'll go through all the intricacies and details that prove that the perimeter-based model of security failed years ago.

Chapter 3: Emerging Tactics and Trends – What Is Coming? – This chapter will be a journey down the rabbit hole into the future of cyber warfare tools and tactics and will provide examples of the new trends in this ever evolving space.

Chapter 4: Influence Attacks – Using Social Media Platforms for Malicious Purposes – In this chapter, we will cover the ways in which social media and influence can be weaponized for cyber warfare tactics.

Chapter 5: DeepFakes and AI/ML in Cyber Security – In this chapter, you will learn about the reality of AI and ML in cyber security and delve into the practical applications of these often-misunderstood technologies.

Chapter 6: Advanced Campaigns in Cyber Warfare – In this chapter, we will get into the types of attack campaigns and their real-world implications.

Chapter 7: Strategic Planning for Future Cyber Warfare – In this chapter, we will break down the specifics around how to better plan for cyber warfare and why strategy matters in digital combat.

Chapter 8: Cyber Warfare Strategic Innovations and Force Multipliers – This chapter is going to provide specific examples of what tools and technologies there are on the market that can help exponentially increase an organizations defensive posture.

Chapter 9: Bracing for Impact – In this chapter, you will be offered examples of how to apply tooling, tactics, and strategies to brace for the impact of a cyber attack and ways in which your organization can better respond when things go awry.

Chapter 10: Survivability in Cyber Warfare and Potential Impacts for Failure – In this chapter, we will cover essential ideas for defensive strategic planning and provide real-world examples of what may happen when cyber warfare tactics go big.

Appendix: Major Cyber Incidents Throughout 2019 – A list of recent major cyber incidents throughout 2019, categorized by the class of attack, as presented in Chapter 6.

To get the most out of this book

• Existing cyber security planners and strategists will gain insight into the reality of the space and will be better able to understand how future innovations part of that future state will be.
• This is not a how-to guide; the author does not wish to provide readers with knowledge that could potentially be turned to malicious purposes, but rather this book aims to provide the reader with a new perspective, to see and prepare for what is coming, rather than to be blinded by the threats that are more imminent.
• Cyber security experience is assumed; however, the book also features introductory concepts, which even beginners can take advantage of.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781839216992_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example: "Changeme.py focuses on detecting default and backdoor credentials, and not just common account credentials."

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, also appear in the text like this. For example: "The first, and arguably most important, technology is commonly called Software-Defined Networking (SDN)."

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

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