Free e-book on security engineering technology

[Alexander Turcic]

With the paper copy available at Amazon for $60, this is a deal any security advocate shouldn't miss. Ross Anderson made his successful book Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems available for free download in PDF format. His reasoning:

My goal in making the book freely available is twofold. First, I want to reach the widest possible audience, especially among poor students. Second, I am a pragmatic libertarian on free culture and free software issues; I think that many publishers (especially of music and software) are too defensive of copyright. I don't expect to lose money by making this book available for free: more people will read it, and those of you who find it useful will hopefully buy a copy. After all, a proper book is half the size and weight of 300-odd sheets of laser-printed paper in a ring binder. (My colleague David MacKay found that putting his book on coding theory online actually helped its sales. Book publishers are getting the message faster than the music or software folks.)

You can download each chapter of the book from Ross' homepage.

[via /.]

[NatCh]

Book publishers are getting the message faster than the music or software folks.

Now there is an interesting statement. I sure hope it's as true as he seems to think it is.

[ath]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

...this is a deal any security advocate shouldn't miss.

Actually, if they have missed it, they probably aren't involved in security in the first place.

This is a standard work -- it's mandatory reading for anyone interested in security from an architectural point of view, and is widely used as a text book.

Lots of examples of things that go wrong: the bank that gave all its customers the same PIN code, how tachograph manipulation is done, etc, etc. But it *is* an academic text.