Books by Thomas Kranz
I write about cybersecurity for people who need to make decisions about it, rather than for people who already have a strong opinion about firewalls. My books take the jargon out of the subject, look at what attackers actually do, and help business leaders, managers, developers and curious non-technologists build defences that are relevant, proportional and sustainable.
Both of my current titles are below, one for getting a firm grip on the fundamentals of cybersecurity, and one for working out where artificial intelligence helps security and where it is mostly marketing.
At a glance:
Making Sense of Cybersecurity (Manning Publications, 2022) - award-winning introduction to cyber threats, defences and strategy
How Is AI Transforming Cybersecurity? (NVIDIA, 2023) - free e-book on AI and data science in security
Making Sense of Cybersecurity
Manning Publications, 2022 | Bronze medal, Axiom Business Book Awards
"A great introduction to the fascinating (and entertaining) world of cybersecurity." - Naz Markuta, Cybersecurity Researcher
Summary:
Someone is attacking your business right now, and the cybersecurity industry has spent years making it hard to understand how. Making Sense of Cybersecurity is a jargon-busting guide to the most common attacks and the defences that work against them, written for business and technical readers who have no background in security.
The book is split into two parts. Part 1 looks at how attackers think and the attacks they use most, including areas that often get ignored, like SMS authentication and physical security. Part 2 turns to the defender's side, covering how to measure and manage risk, build defences, and deal with an attack once it has been detected. Along the way it draws on real-world breaches I have personally helped to clean up, so the lessons come from the field rather than a textbook.
What you will learn
How to develop and incrementally improve your own cybersecurity strategy
How to detect rogue WiFi networks and browse safely on public WiFi
How to protect against physical attacks that use USB devices or building access cards
How to use the OODA loop and a hacker mindset to plan out your own attacks
How to connect to and browse the Dark Web
How to apply threat models to build, measure and improve your defences
How to respond to a detected attack and work through a security breach
Who it is for
Executives, project managers, team leads, developers, and anyone who needs to understand computer security without a technical background. No IT or cybersecurity experience is needed.
Bronze award, Axiom Business Book Awards. Official entry, Business Book Awards 2023.
How Is AI Transforming Cybersecurity?
NVIDIA, 2023 | Free e-book | 58 pages, 5 chapters
Summary:
Cybersecurity teams are dealing with more attacks, more data and more alerts than any human team can read, and spending keeps going up while breaches keep happening. How Is AI Transforming Cybersecurity? is a free e-book I wrote for NVIDIA, looking at why traditional security operations struggle at that scale, and how data science and AI can move an organisation from reacting to attacks to getting ahead of them.
It starts with the size of the problem and the way security teams are organised, and then asks why even well-funded security programmes fail. From there it covers cybersecurity as a data problem, the use of data science to generate insight, and how AI can cut false positives and support a Zero Trust approach. The later chapters look at NVIDIA Morpheus, an AI framework for cybersecurity, with practical use cases like sensitive information detection and digital fingerprinting, before finishing with where data-driven security is heading.
It is free to download, which seems a fair price for a book that spends part of its time explaining why you shouldn't pay a fortune for anything with "AI-powered" stuck on the front.
What you will learn
How cyber risk, attack volumes and the cost of breaches have grown over the last decade, and why more spending hasn't solved the problem
How security organisations are structured, and why building a strong security posture so often fails
Why cybersecurity is a massive-scale data problem, and how data science helps teams generate insight from it
How to move from a reactive to a proactive security posture, and how AI can reduce false positives
What Zero Trust means and how AI and hardware-accelerated tools support it
How NVIDIA Morpheus applies AI to practical problems like detecting leaked sensitive information and spotting compromised accounts through digital fingerprinting
Where machine learning and data-driven cybersecurity are heading next
Who it is for
Security leaders, security operations teams, developers and business decision makers who want a practical view of how AI and data science apply to security operations. The later chapters are more technical and look at NVIDIA's own tools, so the first three chapters suit a general audience.
Free. NVIDIA asks for a short registration to access the download.
About the author
Thomas Kranz is an award-winning cybersecurity consultant, senior security and technology leader and author, with more than 30 years of experience in IT and cybersecurity. He started hacking in the 1980s on a BBC Micro in the UK, has since spent decades lobbying UK and EU policy makers, and has been named Cybersecurity Consultant of the Year at the Globee Awards. His work has appeared in Forbes, Computer Weekly and Security Magazine.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Making Sense of Cybersecurity was written for exactly that audience. It needs no IT or security background, explains common attacks and defences in plain language, and is aimed at business leaders, managers, developers and anyone else who has to make security decisions without being a specialist.
-
Yes. Making Sense of Cybersecurity covers how to build a security strategy, measure and manage risk, and respond to an attack, and it was written with executives and project managers in mind. Reviewers have called it a good way for leadership to understand the full risk of a cyber incident.
-
AI and data science are used to analyse the huge volumes of data that security teams collect, cut down false positives, spot unusual behaviour such as compromised accounts, and detect leaked sensitive information in network traffic. How Is AI Transforming Cybersecurity?, my free e-book for NVIDIA, explains how this moves a security team from reacting to attacks to being proactive.
-
Yes. How Is AI Transforming Cybersecurity? is available as a free download from NVIDIA, after a short registration.
-
Directly from Manning Publications at manning.com, where you can also read a sample using the Look Inside link, as well as from major book retailers.
-
Yes, I am working on further titles. If you want to know when the next one is published, get in touch through the contact page.
Media, speaking or bulk orders?
I speak and run workshops on cybersecurity strategy, AI in security and security for non-technical audiences, and I am happy to talk about review copies, interviews, university course adoption and bulk orders for teams.