Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions: Avoiding the Hazards and Pitfalls that Derail Us

175+ Cybersecurity Misconceptions and the Myth-Busting Skills You Need to Correct Them

Elected into the Cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame!

Cybersecurity is fraught with hidden and unsuspected dangers and difficulties. Despite our best intentions, there are common and avoidable mistakes that arise from folk wisdom, faulty assumptions about the world, and our own human biases. Cybersecurity implementations, investigations, and research all suffer as a result. Many of the bad practices sound logical, especially to people new to the field of cybersecurity, and that means they get adopted and repeated despite not being correct. For instance, why isn't the user the weakest link?

In Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions: Avoiding the Hazards and Pitfalls that Derail Us, three cybersecurity pioneers don't just deliver the first comprehensive collection of falsehoods that derail security from the frontlines to the boardroom; they offer expert practical advice for avoiding or overcoming each myth.

Whatever your cybersecurity role or experience, Eugene H. Spafford, Leigh Metcalf, and Josiah Dykstra will help you surface hidden dangers, prevent avoidable errors, eliminate faulty assumptions, and resist deeply human cognitive biases that compromise prevention, investigation, and research. Throughout the book, you'll find examples drawn from actual cybersecurity events, detailed techniques for recognizing and overcoming security fallacies, and recommended mitigations for building more secure products and businesses.

• Read over 175 common misconceptions held by users, leaders, and cybersecurity professionals, along with tips for how to avoid them.
• Learn the pros and cons of analogies, misconceptions about security tools, and pitfalls of faulty assumptions. What really is the weakest link? When aren't "best practices" best?
• Discover how others understand cybersecurity and improve the effectiveness of cybersecurity decisions as a user, a developer, a researcher, or a leader.
• Get a high-level exposure to why statistics and figures may mislead as well as enlighten.
• Develop skills to identify new myths as they emerge, strategies to avoid future pitfalls, and techniques to help mitigate them.

"You are made to feel as if you would never fall for this and somehow this makes each case all the more memorable. . . . Read the book, laugh at the right places, and put your learning to work. You won't regret it."
--From the Foreword by Vint Cerf, Internet Hall of Fame Pioneer

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Eugene H. Spafford, PhD, is a professor in Computer Science at Purdue University. In his 35-year career, Spaf has been honored with every major award in cybersecurity. Leigh Metcalf, PhD, is a Senior Network Security Research Analyst at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute's cybersecurity-focused CERT® division. Josiah Dykstra, PhD, is a cybersecurity practitioner, researcher, author, and speaker. He is the owner of Designer Security and has worked at the US National Security Agency for 18 years.