Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Scott N. Schober's HACKED AGAIN Earns its Place on the Permanent Bookshelf


HACKED AGAIN:  It Can Happen to Anyone Even a Cybersecurity Expert, ISBN 978-0-9969022-1-2, by Scott N. Schober, 2016.  Available on Amazon for $14.95 in paperback.
HACKED AGAIN makes a welcome contribution to our cyber-security literacy.  This easy-to-read, Tiger’s Eye of a book, is a must-have and must-keep-handy tool for becoming and staying conversant on cyber-safety matters.  If you head a firm or family, but feel too busy, anxious or uncomfortable to learn about your cyber-security, let Scott N. Schober make your foray manageable.  A software engineer, inventor and CEO of a wireless security tech firm, he writes in personal voice and reveals his own frustrations, curiosity and reflections on the risks of contemporary cyber-spatial life.  He chronicles his own learning curve, from his original vulnerabilities stemming from being human, to the victimization of his firm via the exploitation of technologies by cyber-thieves.   Investigating hacks against himself and cyber-crimes against his firm, Mr. Schober is a modern day Sherlock Holmes working the clues, tools, evidence and psychologies of all the players – hackers, institutions and victims.  He is a clever and humble private eye with the public’s interest at heart.  For each of us with a cyber-spatial footprint, from simple social media profiles to email accounts to complex e-commerce platforms, HACKED AGAIN is more than a primer.  It’s a mentor for learning the lingo and the ropes and replacing the generalized anxiety we have about cyber-security with basic competence.  In less than 200 pages, we non-techies can feel more confident about managing our digital footprints as sensibly and routinely as we protect our brick and mortar offices and homes.   
My recommendation is to start at the end with Mr. Schober’s carefully composed glossary which removes the first obstacle to individual cyber-vigilance – the language barrier.  If you feel that the lexicon of cyber-security is as confounding as the topic itself, rest assured that this glossary demystifies terms from the “bot” to the “TOR.”  A handle on the acronyms and jargon will immediately improve the ease with which you process news, instructions and information on cyber-security matters.  Then I suggest going back to Part I to piggy-back Mr. Schober on his journey.  He grows from ignorance through denial and into reality and reconciliation with what is now, for all of us, the “new normal” of personal, professional and civic life in our cyber-spatial world.  In Part 2, he prescribes behaviors and protocols to minimize one’s vulnerabilities and risks.  He concludes each chapter with useful mini-summaries, one paragraph “Quick-Tips” that you can apply or adopt immediately.   Particularly helpful are those that are counter-intuitive and thereby especially eye-opening and cyber-protective.   One such tip is “Do not click on the bottom of a spam e-mail and ask to be removed from the ‘Do Not E-mail’ list.  You will likely receive more spam because hackers now know you are a real person and will then sell your name for more money to other spammers.”  A reasonable person might think that eliminating their name from such a list is wise and lessens their unintentional digital footprint when, in fact, it expands it and their vulnerability.  They become more likely to be cyber-stalked and have their social media accounts mined for data and clues to their passwords. 
In his latter chapters, Mr. Schober expands his probe to our challenges as a society that shops with credit cards, banks online and works in cyberspace.  In an apolitical and non-judgmental manner, he assesses the dynamics of headline breaches and hacks like those that bedeviled so many at Target, JP Morgan Chase and Sony before moving on to threats we face as a cyber-warrior nation starting with the U.S. government’s Office of Personnel  Management.   Perhaps most meaningful for us laypeople, is that at no time does Mr. Schober lose sight of the human factors or toll as he explains the technological components of these violations and the news coverage of them.  This is among Scott Schober’s most valuable and consistent contributions to this field – he puts a human face on the subject of cyber-security in all its facets.   And it is an accessible and welcome one.  

HACKED AGAIN leaves room for a future edition as Scott Schober nimbly wrestles the next generation of cyber-technologies, schemes and malicious hackers.  Going forward, I hope he adds an index to the book to expedite the many references I see in my copy’s future.   HACKED AGAIN is a hard-copy keeper and will be dog-eared on my bookshelf until its sequel comes along.   

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