A valuable resource for executives concerned with the protection of vital technological property.
A brief but comprehensive introduction to business cybersecurity for tech newbs.
Business executives commonly find cybersecurity a daunting subject—complicated and gloomily obsessed with nightmarish catastrophe. Debut author Moschovitis, a professional cybersecurity analyst, provides a pragmatically minded and accessible primer on the subject that won’t transform readers into experts but will allow them to engage in informed conversations with those who are. The study proceeds without any assumptions of prior knowledge, beginning with a basic introduction to the nature of risk and how to assess it, what precisely needs protecting, what kinds of threats and defensive strategies are possible, and an overview of best practices and a means to measure success. And in case all that planning fails nevertheless, the author also discusses incident-response plans. Moschovitis helpfully includes a focus on the culture where such issues are bureaucratically managed and explains the place cybersecurity occupies within the overall IT ecosystem. He builds a running glossary over the course of the book—helping facilitate conversation between executive managers and their cybersecurity experts—and furnishes numerous case studies to illustrate his principal points. He approaches these terminological clarifications in the spirit with which the entire work is composed in an effort to produce the kind of “meaningful definition we can pin to our monitors, consult frequently, and easily understand.” Moschovitis has a talent for translating the technically inscrutable into plain, informal prose. Cybersecurity is a maddeningly complex subject, and he manages to provide a remarkably synoptic introduction with admirable concision. This is more than just a catalog of conceptual elucidations—the author also gives an account of the stakes in devising a cybersecurity strategy. In other words, he gives inexpert executives the necessary knowledge to make their own decisions about what counts as an acceptable risk and which assets are the companies’ most important and therefore in need of the most vigilant protection. Moschovitis does sometimes meander too far, and when he does, he is prone to precisely the kind of tedious, gratuitously technical prose he decries: “Governance is the collective set of principle-guided actions that when applied guide a company to the fulfillment of its goals.” The chief difficulty isn’t the writing, though it seems as if computer jargon has been replaced by equally banal business-management jargon. (Is there a set that isn’t “collective”?) The real problem here is that while executives might be wholly ignorant of the basic principles of cybersecurity, it’s unlikely they need a quick course in business administration as well. It’s probably safe to assume that the kind of senior staff tasked with managing cybersecurity concerns doesn’t need an explanation of governance, especially one so anodyne. Notwithstanding his tendency to overexplain, Moschovitis impressively achieves his intended goal—a comprehensive account of cybersecurity that makes intelligent strategic collaboration between experts and nonexperts possible.
A valuable resource for executives concerned with the protection of vital technological property.Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-119-42951-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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