Book Review: Cybersecurity Program Development for Business: The Essential Planning Guide

Many reports to business owners, executives and consumers on the subject of cybersecurity are prefaced with an array of statistics and news stories designed to induce fear and insecurity, while at the same time creating an awareness of the immediate need for action. While this approach can be effective at expressing the seriousness of the subject matter and opening the door to a dialogue, it's really less of a conversation than a sales pitch unless both sides have a requisite understanding of the issues, terminology and reasonable objectives they should be seeking.

Focusing on the commercial side, the problem is that while many business owners and executives understand that a data security problem/need exists, they do not have a baseline fluency in the concepts and alphabet soup that comprise the language of digital information security. Beyond that, they further do not comprehend other critical basics, such as: what are a business' digital assets; who and what are the cybercriminals they should fear; what are a business' vulnerabilities; and what are the practical options and strategies to protect against and rebound from a cyber attack.