Personal Cybersecurity

Discover the most prevalent cyber threats against individual users of all kinds of computing devices. This book teaches you the defensive best practices and state-of-the-art tools available to you to repel each kind of threat.

Personal Cybersecurity addresses the needs of individual users at work and at home. This book covers personal cybersecurity for all modes of personal computing whether on consumer-acquired or company-issued devices: desktop PCs, laptops, mobile devices, smart TVs, WiFi and Bluetooth peripherals, and IoT objects embedded with network-connected sensors. In all these modes, the frequency, intensity, and sophistication of cyberattacks that put individual users at risk are increasing in step with accelerating mutation rates of malware and cybercriminal delivery systems.

Traditional anti-virus software and personal firewalls no longer suffice to guarantee personal security. Users who neglect to learn and adopt the new ways of protecting themselves in their work and private environments put themselves, their associates, and their companies at risk of inconvenience, violation, reputational damage, data corruption, data theft, system degradation, system destruction, financial harm, and criminal disaster. This book shows what actions to take to limit the harm and recover from the damage.

What You'll Learn

• Discover how computer security works and what it can protect us from
• See how a typical hacker attack works
Evaluate computer security threats to the individual user and corporate systems
• Identify the critical vulnerabilities of a computer connected to the Internet
• Manage your computer to reduce vulnerabilities to yourself and your employer
• Discover how the adoption of newer forms of biometric authentication affects you
• Stop your router and other online devices from being co-opted into disruptive denial of service attacks