Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know

When I began my search for a book to review, I looked up information society, information security, and, lastly, cyber security. The results for information society were interesting, but not interesting enough. I started looking into the security behind the information society because as more and more of society goes onto the system of networks, which have serious vulnerabilities and many that are being discovered every day that could damage significant portions of the network and the people interacting on the network. The ability of a network society to exist relies predominantly on trust in the network to function and people's information be kept relatively private. The most eye-catching, relatively new, and engaging results on Amazon were Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know by PW Singer and Allan Friedman, Glass Houses: Privacy, Secrecy, and Cyber Insecurity in a Transparent World by Joel Brenner, and The Hacker Playbook: Practical Guide to Penetration Testing by Peter Kim. The book with the most reviews on Amazon for print edition is Cybersecurity and Cyberwar with 179 reviews. The highest rated book is The Hacker Playbook receiving 4.6/5 stars, and the lowest rated book is Cybersecurity and Cyberwar at 4.2/5 stars. The most expensive book is Cybersecurity and Cyberwar in Hardcover at $67.46, the most expensive book either in Kindle edition, Audio book, or paperback is The Hacker Playbook at $21.93 for paperback, and $14.99 for the Kindle edition. Cybersecurity and Cyberwar, and Glass Houses tied for longest book at 320 pages. The Hacker Playbook ranks higher in overall sales in books coming in at 2,378th most purchases book on Amazon, and the number 1 best seller in software testing, and 11th in Internet and Web culture best sellers list. However,  when looking at the different locations for these books, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar had the most, and this books was also reviewed on LibraryThing. I decided to go with Cybersecurity and Cyberwar.

The books reviews of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, were in the journals: The American Scholar, a transcript of an interview on NPR in Philadelphia, and Signal. One of the reviewers was from the group Anonymous, who asked PW Singer and Allan Friedman to pose six questions about the public and cybersecurity. In all the articles, the fact that the most vulnerable aspect of cybersecurity is humans and especially their choice in obvious passwords-the most common two are password/Password and 123456. Or other people tend to choose passwords that don't change too much but other than in one digit, common in various logins, and are extremely deterministic-using last names, names of close family members, names of pets, etc. Other aspects is the general misinformed public about the internet, who is to blame when it breaks, and the common use of the newest technology in the political realm regardless of the period. None of the reviewers disagreed with the book, and praised it as a good starting point for many people in understanding the implications and the ever-growing need for stronger information security. 

Fonow, B. (2014). Cybersecurity and cyberwar: What everyone needs to know. Signal, 68(10), 50. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/docview/1540483418?accountid=465
'What everyone needs to know' about today's cyberthreats (2014). . Philadelphia: National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/docview/1477285190?accountid=465
The sobering cyber future. (2014). The American Scholar, , 12-13. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/docview/1509433530?accountid=465