A thorough and astute manual on cybersecurity written with great clarity and authority.
A guide explores the dangers of the digital world and the strategies to counter them.
Scott N. Schober (Hacked Again, 2016) begins his panoramically thorough tour of cybersecurity by painting a grim picture of a perilous technological time: “Nearly one million new malware threats are released every single day.” And there’s no “foolproof way” to inoculate oneself against the farrago of threats. The best readers can do is to formulate a multipronged strategy, “increasing the number of layers or security challenges.” Focusing on the personal user and small business owner, the author provides a comprehensive—and sometimes meandering—examination of virtually every patch of the computing landscape. He covers the quotidian—the limitations of passwords and the advantages of two-factor authentication, for example—and the more obscure, like the dangers posed by the trail of metadata internet users leave behind. The book also expertly mines the biggest security breaches in recent years for lessons, including assessments of the Yahoo, Ashley Madison, and Uber troubles. In the work’s concluding section, the author looks to the future and considers the promise and dangers of cryptocurrency, driverless cars, and even the susceptibility of older modes of transportation—planes, trains, and automobiles—to predatory hackers. His chief message is that, since the insufficient vigilance of any one digital user potentially exposes others to risk, the task of cybersecurity is a community effort: “Criminals piece together fragments of our hacked private information in order to form a full puzzle of our digital identities, but each piece of the cybersecurity puzzle we collect by learning how to protect ourselves can also effectively protect others.” The author’s command of the subject, including technical as well as historical knowledge, is magisterial. And besides his helpful, actionable advice regarding the protection of one’s digital life, the writer—who penned this book with his younger brother, debut author Craig W. Schober—furnishes an accessible explanation of the always changing technological world, including its primary players, such as Google and Facebook. But the volume sometimes digresses too far afield—readers in search of practical counsel can do without profiles of infamous hackers.
A thorough and astute manual on cybersecurity written with great clarity and authority.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9969022-5-0
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Scottschober.com Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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