Security without Obscurity

The traditional view of information security includes the three cornerstones: confidentiality, integrity, and availability; however the author asserts authentication is the third keystone. As the field continues to grow in complexity, novices and professionals need a reliable reference that clearly outlines the essentials. Security without Obscurity: A Guide to Confidentiality, Authentication, and Integrity fills this need.

Rather than focusing on compliance or policies and procedures, this book takes a top-down approach. It shares the author’s knowledge, insights, and observations about information security based on his experience developing dozens of ISO Technical Committee 68 and ANSI accredited X9 standards. Starting with the fundamentals, it provides an understanding of how to approach information security from the bedrock principles of confidentiality, integrity, and authentication.

The text delves beyond the typical cryptographic abstracts of encryption and digital signatures as the fundamental security controls to explain how to implement them into applications, policies, and procedures to meet business and compliance requirements. Providing you with a foundation in cryptography, it keeps things simple regarding symmetric versus asymmetric cryptography, and only refers to algorithms in general, without going too deeply into complex mathematics.

Presenting comprehensive and in-depth coverage of confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation, privacy, and key management, this book supplies authoritative insight into the commonalities and differences of various users, providers, and regulators in the U.S. and abroad.