The Practical Guide to Internet and Network Security: From Business Objectives to Operational Defense

Most security books either drown you in checklists or lose you in theory. The Practical Guide to Internet and Network Security does neither. It starts where security actually starts, with business objectives, risk, and what the organization is trying to protect, and drives all the way down to operational defense: the architecture, policy, and hands-on controls you'll actually configure and run. Vendor-neutral, concept-first, and focused on why before what.

Inside, you'll learn to:

• Approach any security problem with a repeatable method and to think both like an attacker and a business leader, grounded in risk and compliance
• Understand how modern attacks unfold, from the kill chain to threat actors and ransomware
• Build the core defenses: encryption from the ground up, identity and access management, and firewall architecture and policy
• Inspect encrypted traffic and deploy intrusion prevention, VPNs, and data loss prevention
• Modernize the network with zero-trust, microsegmentation, SASE, and SD-WAN
• Defend the full attack surface: DNS, email, networks, wireless, endpoints, applications, and data
• Run security operations end to end: logging, SIEM, SOAR, and vulnerability management
• Respond to incidents and analyze malware when prevention fails
• Prepare for what's next, from AI-assisted defense to post-quantum cryptography

Suited to newcomers and experienced practitioners alike, it serves both as practical instruction and as an enduring professional reference to keep on your shelf.

Payam Hojjat, M.S., CISSP, is the Chief of Cyber Risk, Privacy, Governance & AI for the State of California, a cybersecurity professor, and a former CISO with more than 13 years of experience translating complex risk into clear, defensible executive decisions.