Personal Cybersecurity: How to Avoid and Recover from Cybercrime

272 Pages·2017·2.62 MB·English

by  Marvin Waschke

Marvin Waschke
Personal Cybersecurity
How to Avoid and Recover from Cybercrime
Marvin Waschke
Bellingham, Washington, USA
Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this
book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s product page, located at
www.apress.com/9781484224298 . For more detailed information,
please visit http://www.apress.com/source-code .
ISBN 978-1-48422429-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-2430-4
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4842-2430-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930630
© Marvin Waschke 2017
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Introduction
I wrote this book to solve two very specific problems for my fellow IT
professionals. We all get too many questions from individual computer users
who are worried about the security of their personal computers, tablets, and
phones. In the industry, the acronym RTFM is hurled at beginners for asking
naïve questions. But that is not an appropriate answer to a user concerned about
computer security. These folks ask good and important questions that deserve
serious answers.
A few years ago, after repeating the same answers many times, I started to
look for the right book to recommend. There are many good books on computer
security but most of them drift into security for system administrators; this
confuses ordinary users and leaves them uncertain. And no one needs to be
reminded that the details of computing change rapidly, but the basic principles
stay the same. Users need knowledge that will give them a foundation to build
on as the details of security issues change.
Many books on personal computer security tend to be highly prescriptive
with lots of screenshots and values to fill into specific fields. This is nice, but
this aspect of computing changes rapidly and many of these books become
confusing within months of publication because interfaces change. Users need
simple explanations of what they are doing and why they are doing it, not
outdated, detailed instructions. The rate of change has escalated as products
adopt automated update practices. Products evolve much more rapidly than a
few years past. To stay safe during rapid change, computer users must have a
firm grasp of what they are protecting themselves against, how the protections
work, and why they need to protect themselves.
The book is divided into three sections. The first section explains how
computing has developed, how cybercrime has become a serious problem, and
the extent of its severity. The second section examines what government and
industry have done to respond. The third section relies heavily on the previous
two sections and focuses on what you can do to protect yourself and what to do
when you become a victim. Throughout, I have tried to maintain focus on what
is wrong, why it is wrong, and how the response works so that a user can apply
the advice to any computer they work with.
If I have succeeded in my goal, the users who read this book will be
informed, not quite so nervous, and prepared to avoid or actively resist the
security issues that plague them. This book will not eliminate user questions to
security issues that plague them. This book will not eliminate user questions to
IT professionals, nor will it eliminate the need for operating system and product
security documentation. In a world where substantial updates are automatically
applied every month, a book like this would not be useful for long if it was only
a snapshot of cybersecurity at one moment in time.
Readers may be tempted to skip to the last two chapters. If you are under
attack and feel the need to take immediate action, do skip ahead. But then go
back and read the preceding chapters. You will find that the recommendations in
the final chapters will make more sense, are easier to accept, and can be applied
more effectively after you have the background the earlier chapters provide.
Acknowledgments
I owe a tremendous debt to all my former colleagues
at CA Technologies, Inc. I learned from my colleagues
and customers every day I worked at CA. I had daily
opportunities to confer with security specialists,
antimalware builders, and encryption experts. I
talked with customers who had been hacked, asking
how it happened and how it affected their business
and them personally, how they could have avoided it,
and what they would do to prevent it in the future.
Since I retired from CA and began to concentrate
on writing about computing, I have pursued another
passion: public libraries. I serve on the board of the
Whatcom County Library System in Washington
State. The library and its patrons inspired me to focus
on personal cybersecurity. Special recognition goes to
the Executive Director, Christine Perkins, and IT
Services Manager, Geoff Fitzpatrick.
My good friend Efraim Moskovitz was my
constant sounding board while writing this book. He
pushed me on and reined me in as needed. Efraim and
I worked together on the CA Council for Technical
Excellence for several years and Efraim contributed
several articles to the CA Technology Exchange ,
which I edited. Efraim was technical reviewer for
both of my previous books with Apress.
My online acquaintance Shawn Coyne made some