I recommend newish book - Zero Day Threat

Title is: Zero day threat [n.]: a hazard so new that no viable protection against it yet exists.
Authors are Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz. Copyright 2008 by Union Square Press, an imprint of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., in NY, NY. 297 pages. Acohido is a former Pulitzer Prize winner for his investigative reporting, and Swartz has been Pulitzer-nominated for investigative reporting in the IT realm.

The blurb on the inside cover reads: A digital true-crime story, Zero Day Threat is an alarming and eye-opening investigative expose' of our growing vulnerability to identity theft and fraud -- due not only to scheming cyber-criminals, but also to deliberate policies of banks and other technology giants that place their own profits above public security.

Note: The examples in this book are all for the PC platform, but 2 techie friends of mine who are experts on Apple computers tell me that the Apple environment has its security issues, too.

Here is a link to Amazon where if you scroll down to near the bottom of the page you will be able to read some interesting positive reviews of this book from readers with high-tech credentials themselves:

www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271518631&sr=1-1

On the back cover of the book, there is praise from Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism expert, as well as Tom Abate (technology reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle), Matt Hines (senior writer at InfoWorld.com), and other with computer security expertise.

The book is very hard-hitting, but so worth a read. The authors also have an update page listing major threats that have emerged since the book was published:

zerodaythreat.com...

This is the best book I have seen in recent years on internet threats for the PC, and their implications for identity theft. Or are there other books out there that you like just as well?

[edit on 4/17/2010 by Uphill]

I will be checking that out..

I also want to say that NO ONE is immune..

I am a Cop as most of you know and a Computer Forensics Specialist and my identify was "stolen" last year to the tune of 9K

It can happen to anyone and anything that will make us more aware is good news in my book...



Semper

Here is the book's subtitle, which I forgot to add in the OP: "the shocking truth of how banks and credit bureaus help cyber crooks steal your money and identity"

It's very likely that a local public library will have a copy of the book in case you can't buy your own copy right away.

Although I was a support person in a non-profit small computer network environment for 7 years, I was stunned to read the following in Appendix B of Zero Day Threat:

In a survey of security experts done by this book's authors, "a staggering 82% of tech-security professionals encountered malicious software on their computers and more than half had their credit card accounts used fraudulently." ??? -- maybe those on the front lines are more of a target, but on a gut level, I don't think so.

On page 241 of ZDT, one of the authors had a brief conversation with Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft:

Ballmer asked what the author had discovered in the course of writing ZDT.
Reporter: "It appears as though the financial services industry may have moved too quickly into online services; someone failed to fully weigh how profoundly consumers would be exposed to data theft and identity scams."
Ballmer: "The internet is sometimes about weighing financial opportunity with acceptable losses. It's something we all grapple with."

Great, now they tell us. Another stunning surprise in ZDT was that store debit card readers sometimes capture your user name and PIN number, even tho that's illegal. Evidently sometimes someone in the retail chain's home office sets it up that way and then doesn't tell anyone about it at the store level. Gross. Now I understand how any nearby criminal with a skimmer can capture everything they need to do their little evil deeds.

[edit on 4/17/2010 by Uphill]