Cybersecurity: Managing Systems, Conducting Testing, and Investigating Intrusions

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the SANS Institute, in particular Allan Paller and Ed Skoudis, for conducting terrific cybersecurity training programs. Thanks also to the NGC/TASC Corporation for sponsoring SANS training, the TASC Institute security training programs, and for encouraging me to found the NGC/TASC Cyber Warfare Community of Interest.

Special thanks to my SANS gold paper advisor, Dr. Kees Leune, who contributed many ideas and much encouragement to Chapter 14, which was originally published as a SANS Gold Paper. I am very fortunate to have someone with his credentials, including a recent PhD in Information Security, advising on Chapter 14.

Many thanks are also due to Wellhouse Consultants for their free online Python tutorial on multithreading (www.wellho.net/). The threaded code in Chapters 6 and 14 is original, but it is inspired by their tutorial example, in which they also claim dramatic speed-up over serial processing.

Gail Tyron, IBM, supplied many cloud computing practice examples included in Chapter 12. Ms. Tyron is an IT security policy subject matter expert, specializing the NIST 800 series, with visibility into cloud practices across many enterprises. Thanks to Mr. Roger Caslow who continues to encourage this project.

Generous thanks to my editorial team at John Wiley & Sons. They saw the vision of this project and stuck with me all the way to the goal!