Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare: What Everyone Needs to Know

CYBERSECURITY AND CYBERWARFARE: WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW by P. W. Singer and Allan Friedman Oxford University Press, 2014, 306 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19-991811-9The book, Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare provides a survey of the problems and opportunities arising from the rapid explosion of and its growing role in the world's security. The first part of the book addresses recurring technical concepts and provides a summarized history of cyber. Both components are used and expanded throughout the book. The next section addresses the importance of cyber and outlines the different domestic, national, and international elements of cyberattacks and defense. The associated dangers of these approaches to citizens and nations are identified. The book concludes with a discussion of how an informed citizenry and government, specifically in the US, can prepare for cyber threats. The aim here is to provide enough background information so that an informed citizen can make conscious choices and participate in - or vote on - political decisions having a basic understanding of cyberspace.Writing this book to make it accessible to a non-technical audience, Singer and Friedman define and outline the basics of cyberspace and their implications on society. They first provide a working definition for cyberspace: computer networks (and the users behind them) in which information is stored, shared and communicated online, (p. 12) Cyberspace is consequently an evolving entity that has both physical components, like computers, and digital informational components, like binary and encrypted data. The human operators and their machines are physically located in nations, yet the digital elements frequently transcend national boundaries. This is the inherent unique characteristic of cyberspace. turn, this physical-digital duality is important to understanding how both nations and individuals can have great influence throughout cyberspace. Clearly, nations have the resources to fund attacks, defense, and monitoring. Individuals, however, also have considerable cyber power. Anyone with access to the internet can become an involved party in a global or local issue that concerns them. For instance, Chelsea Manning demonstrated just how powerful the internet can be by releasing sensitive information about the operations of the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army then responded in turn by imprisoning Manning, reminding the public that and actions therein are not isolated from the physical world. In the end, those [like Manning] who wished to set information free are themselves no longer free. (p. 55) The physical-digital duality of may provide greater power to individuals, but organizations and nations are still far from powerless.One of the main themes is how individuals, organizations, and nations address the dichotomy between providing both a means for oppression and the potential of democratization and freedom of information. …