Look at any major news source and you’re bound to find a story or two about recent cyberattacks. Whether it’s a new scam spreading across the internet, hospitals or other organizations targeted with ransomware, or even elections disrupted by other countries, adversaries try to circumvent cybersecurity in many ways. You might find these attacks of interest but think they don’t have much to do with you. However, as cyberattacks become increasingly common, attackers no longer focus exclusively on big corporations. They’ve begun to target everyday individuals. As a result, you can no longer afford to just read about cybersecurity; it’s a daily skill you need to learn and practice.
If you’ve struggled and searched to learn about cybersecurity without first cultivating a deep technical background, look no further: this book is perfect for those who have no background in security, or even computers for that matter.
I created this book to fill a gap. Few resources exist for those who want to understand more than just the basics of computer engineering or administration but aren’t trying to become full-fledged cybersecurity professionals. It’s designed to cover a wide range of topics across the core cybersecurity concepts. Cybersecurity is a vast field with lots of deep valleys that you can easily get lost in. Think of this book as a helicopter tour; you’ll fly over those valleys to get an idea of where you might explore next.
To provide this overview, this book focuses on how black hats operate and the sorts of attacks that exist. At its core, cybersecurity is about defending against threats, both physical and logical, to technical assets. By focusing on what black hats attempt to do, we’ll link threats to the vulnerabilities that cause them and controls that protect against them.
The only way to learn cybersecurity concepts is to practice them. To that end, every chapter ends with an exercise that helps you apply the concepts you just learned. These exercises are designed to be completed at home and provide some insight into what you can do to make sure your systems are secure every day. They focus on the core concepts while providing practical knowledge you can use when implementing cybersecurity.
The exercises in this book assume you’re using the Windows or macOS operating system, because of their widespread use by people and organizations worldwide. To follow along, you’ll need at least a Windows 10 or macOS X system.
Many cybersecurity professionals and tools use Linux-based operating systems instead. Although this book doesn’t cover Linux, with a little research you can easily translate many of the concepts explained in the exercises to a Linux system. If you want to pursue cybersecurity further after reading this book, I encourage you to learn about Linux by using resources like Linux Basics for Hackers by OccupyTheWeb (No Starch Press, 2019).
This book is for anyone who’s interested in cybersecurity but isn’t entirely sure what cybersecurity means. That includes people without technical backgrounds, although if you’re just beginning your technical career or are a new computer science student interested in cybersecurity, this book is definitely a great place to start. The intended audience also includes business leaders, account managers, sales and marketing professionals, or any hobbyist who might want to understand why cybersecurity is so important and what it encompasses.
Readers of any age will benefit from reading this book. Although knowledge of some basic concepts about how computers or networking works is helpful, it’s not required to understand the topics in this book. Most of all, this book is for anyone who has ever been curious about how hacking or cybersecurity works in the real world, far beyond what you see in movies or on TV.
The following breakdown of each chapter gives you an idea of the topics we’ll explore:
By the end of this book, you’ll have a solid idea of what cybersecurity includes, what the core concepts are, how specific attacks work (and what controls you can use to defend your system against them), and how you can implement cybersecurity in practice. You’ll be ready to move on to more advanced topics based on your interests, whether they involve learning how to implement an Active Directory server, create your own encryption cipher, manage vulnerabilities, or run penetration tests. The best part is that you’ll understand how cybersecurity can affect your everyday life and what you can do to secure your devices against increasingly common black hat attacks.
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