Customer Reviews

Defending the Digital Frontier: A Security Agenda

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With my corporation having worked with Ernst & Young's Security & Technology Solutions group over the years, my colleagues and I have come to respect them as among the most practical and knowledgeable security professionals in the field of IT security. Defending the Digital Frontier nicely reflects E&Y's experience and practices, providing easy-to-understand concepts and insights involving the implementation of a realistic security program.

My only wish is that the book provided more case examples of actual corporate security incidents, including a description of the financial losses and other impacts experienced by the victimized company, plus how the event was handled (both right and wrong). Such "lessons learned" should be more widely communicated. Having companies as well as firms like E&Y share their security incident experiences would contribute greatly to improving our ability to properly respond to security threats.

I've been in the business game for a long time (26 yrs). During that time I've learned many things, sometimes willingly, sometimes by force. I have to admit that I was resistant to the idea of adopting the internet, especially when it came to transacting with my clients and customers. As we've all learned though, with digital and internet technologies growing by leaps and bounds, its a necessary evil. So being my pesimist self I've become semi-obsessed with understanding as many aspects of digital security, because if I don't understand it, then I can't very well expect my clients to have faith in my promises, can I?

"Defending the Digital Frontier: A Security Agenda" is the first book i've read, and I've read plenty, that is written so the right people can understand it. The "techies" already understand this stuff, but the people who make the decisions (e.g. how much budget those techies get to keep your netwrok secure), like the CEO and CFO, have never had it portrayed as a priority, like Mark Doll has been able to do in this book.

I usually don't review books, but with all of the recent news about networks being compromised, like the 8 million credit cards stollen this past week, I felt it was my responsibility to make sure I said my piece.

Buy it, read it, and use it, for yourself and for your customers.

I found this book to be a great read aimed at the non-tech executive. It explains the issues and provides the answers in clear, understandable terms, and gives real-world scenarios to back them up. It even provides a how-to-implement section that companies can fit into their structure. Overall, it balances the two issues that usually are at odds with each other: security and the bottom line. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand the threats companies face today, and the way to work around them.

Defending the Digital Frontier starts with a patriotic forward by former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. I think that was my favorite part of the book, I know a lot of people are starting to think of 911 as old news, but I am not one of them. Giuliani issues a call to action to protect your information asset's for the nationšs good. I started into the book quite excited.

The first three chapters say the same thing over and over again but with different word patterns. The gist is wešre under attack and you better get ready for it. When your computers go down, so will your business. True, but that could be covered with one paragraph, and perhaps a couple war stories.

Ernst and Young's experts Mark W. Doll, Saiay Rai and Jose Granado propose that we can achieve homeland security with their 3 Ršs of the Security Agenda: Restrict, Run and Recover(SM). While it certainly is not that simple in practice, I really like the catchy slogan, it is perfect for communicating with senior executives.

The writing style is a bit dry, the repetition and lack of depth hurt the work, but the topic is very important. It does a great job of convincing a CEO class executive that they need a well founded security program. It just doesn't help them get it started. I want to be very specific with my concerns since I am scoring the book lower that the other (mostly anonymous) reviewers. I am a senior manager, the target audience for the book. People ask me for decisions or try to sell me on their product or solution all the time. It isn't that they tell me lies, they just do not give me all the information I need to make an informed decision. After a while you learn to be very careful about making decisions without all the facts. This work needs more case studies, more specific, proven examples. It also needs more takeaways, information I can use. Granted it is very unfair to ask E&Y to give away intellectual capital that took them a lot of sweat and blood to create, but at least give the reader enough information to assess our condition and understand what the next steps are.

I encourage Ernst and Young to do a second edition with some "show me the beef" hardnosed technical reviewers and produce a great book.

In a time a great tension and uncertainty this book is a terrific guide to understanding IT security and developing a strategy to protect an organization. As an executive this book is very helpful. I plan on giving it to my peers to remind them that all executives have responsibility for security.

As an executive worrying about security, this book helped me understand the importance of a proper security strategy and how best to lay out a business, not technical plan for protecting my company. I highly recommend this book to any business executive who stays up at night thinking about security.

If you're an IT professional don't buy this book for your own library -- buy it for your boss! Mark Doll and company have written one of the few books that make the case for establishing true security procedures as part of a bottom line business strategy. This is not a book about what might happen, it's a book about what IS happening right now and what business leaders need to do to prepare.

Guiliani's endorsement cannot be more timely on one of America's most important issues! This book accurately communicates to executives the real threats that can come from digital sources. The author makes the best attempt I've ever seen to communicate to executives what they should do but Guiliani's passionate call to action seems to be the highlight of this book. I can only hope that the conscientious executive will read past the politics and rhetoric and implement this author's vision of security.