A valuable resource for business owners—especially those whose businesses are “heavily digitized.”
A thorough introduction to commercial cybersecurity.
Clements, the founder of the Chicago Technology Group, a cybersecurity firm, notes that both threats to businesses’ technology assets and the costs of prevention are on the rise. Per the author, most small businesses don’t have a comprehensive cybersecurity program, or even a full-time IT staff, and as a result are likely vulnerable to attack. While Clements ultimately recommends the application of professional expertise, before this stage a business can still conduct a wide-reaching (if preliminary) review of its cybersecurity, including an inventory of vulnerable assets, sensitive data, and various “attack surfaces,” entry points open to illicit incursions. The core mechanism of such a self-assessment is a cybersecurity checklist that provides a panoramic survey of business risks paired with “action plans,” strategies to increase a business’ ability to minimize and respond to those risks. In this impressive synopsis of a complex subject, Clements covers a broad spectrum of topics, including expected subjects like firewalls and wireless networking, in addition to more esoteric considerations, such as the dangers of outsourced labor. The highlight of the book—and there are many useful aspects to this exceedingly practical volume—is the discussion of cybersecurity insurance and its central importance to a general security strategy. This treatment is helpfully paired with an exploration of compliance regulations and industry safeguards—and the steep costs associated with their neglect. The author includes many concrete examples that lucidly illustrate his points. The book’s language is largely free of hypertechnical jargon and is accessible to readers with minimal knowledge about the subject. There are now many such introductions to cybersecurity available, but Clements’ contribution to the literature is an attractive option for the business owner looking for a brief but detail-rich primer.
A valuable resource for business owners—especially those whose businesses are “heavily digitized.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780976224815
Page Count: 154
Publisher: divum
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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