(Ebook) Advanced Persistent Threat. Understanding the Danger and How to Protect Your Organization by Eric Cole ISBN 9781597499491, 1597499498

(Ebook) Advanced Persistent Threat. Understanding the Danger and How to Protect Your Organization by Eric Cole ISBN 9781597499491, 1597499498

The newest threat to security has been categorized as the Advanced Persistent Threat or APT. The APT bypasses most of an organization’s current security devices, and is typically carried out by an organized group, such as a foreign nation state or rogue group with both the capability and the intent to persistently and effectively target a specific entity and wreak havoc. Most organizations do not understand how to deal with it and what is needed to protect their network from compromise. Review: I would like to start off with the bottom line first. There is a LOT of great information in the book, but the layout of the book makes it a bit hard to find the key points even with the incredibly detailed table of contents. Syngress should adopt call outs, text boxes and other publishing techniques to highlight key information instead of producing one huge "run on" manuscript.In light of that what I would like to do in this review is highlight some of the practical tips in the book. A major theme is that while protection is ideal, detection is a must. Dr. Cole, a practitioner in the field, has learned what we all need to understand. The odds are very high that any organization is already compromised. The key is to detect the information as the attackers try to exfiltrate it.Some other points, that are not to be missed:Page 15 Do not allow HTML mail unless you absolutely need it for your businessPage 16 Do not allow documents with macros unless you absolutely need it for your businessPage 29 Activity does not equal security, tackle the highest priority riskPage 31 Assume the attackers are already in your networkPage 39 Focus on protecting your critical data (data centric security)Page 71 237 rules in your firewall equals ANY ANY ANY ANY - ALLOWPage 91 The advice here will not be popular, but if you do not absolutely need it for your business, get rid of itPage 107 The entire section on data classification is a must read, must implementPage 140 ... ets. to Page 243…