Cybersecurity: Protecting Critical Infrastructures from Cyber Attack and Cyber Warfare

The World Economic Forum regards the threat of cyber attack as one of the top five global risks confronting nations of the world today. Cyber attacks are increasingly targeting the core functions of the economies in nations throughout the world. The threat to attack critical infrastructures, disrupt critical services, and induce a wide range of damage is becoming more difficult to defend against. Cybersecurity: Protecting Critical Infrastructures from Cyber Attack and Cyber Warfare examines the current cyber threat landscape and discusses the strategies being used by governments and corporations to protect against these threats.

The book first provides a historical reference, detailing the emergence of viruses, worms, malware, and other cyber threats that created the need for the cybersecurity field. It then discusses the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructures, the broad arsenal of cyber attack tools, and the various engineering design issues involved in protecting our infrastructures. It goes on to cover cyber intelligence tactics, recent examples of cyber conflict and warfare, and the key issues in formulating a national strategy to defend against cyber warfare.

The book also discusses how to assess and measure the cost of cybersecurity. It examines the many associated cost factors and presents the results of several important industry-based economic studies of security breaches that have occurred within many nations. The book concludes with a look at future trends in cybersecurity. It discusses the potential impact of industry-wide transformational changes, such as virtualization, social media, cloud computing, structured and unstructured data, big data, and data analytics.

Dr. Thomas A. Johnson currently serves as the associate vice president and chief of strategic initiatives for Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the SANS Technology Institute. He earned his bachelors and masters degrees from Michigan State University and his doctorate from the University of CaliforniaBerkeley. Dr. Johnson has developed programs in cybercrime and forensic computer investigation and also founded the Graduate National Security program offered at two of our National Nuclear Security Administration laboratories in California and New Mexico. As program leader for the Graduate Cybersecurity degree for Webster University, Dr. Johnson worked with 20 colleagues to implement the program at multiple military locations and several regional metropolitan sites, as well as the main campus in St. Louis.