Book Review:
Special Section on
Computer Security and Privacy

By NANCY ALLISON
Boston Chapter

How much do you need to know about data security and privacy issues — as a technical writer? a home computer user? a citizen of the world?

Well, how's this for a philosophy of privacy:

“You have zero privacy anyway . . . Get over it.”

—Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems

And is the following a good-enough security standard?

“Using encryption on the Internet is the equivalent of arranging an armored car to deliver credit-card information from someone living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench.”

—Prof. Gene Spafford
Center for Education and Research in
Information Assurance and Security
Purdue University

If you answered NO! to both questions, you need to educate yourself so that you can make informed decisions as security and privacy issues affect you. The five books and book sets reviewed here offer a range of approaches and content:

• Technical, development-oriented content focusing on security and privacy problems and solutions: Security and Privacy for E-Business, by Anup K. Ghosh
  
  
• Entertaining, informative journalistic narrative reviewing the history of security attacks: Tangled Web: Tales of Digital Crime from the Shadows of Cyberspace, by Richard Power
  
  
• Clear presentation of security and privacy concepts in a highly readable style: Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, by Bruce Schneier
  
  
• Thorough examination of current privacy problems, with believable speculations about near-term, future privacy violations: Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century, Simson Garfinkel
  
  
• Nitty-gritty detail, including source code, explaining tools and techniques used by hackers and security experts: Hack Attacks trilogy, by John Chirillo