Cyber Defense Matrix: The Essential Guide to Navigating the Cybersecurity Landscape

Fantastic job overall with this book - it does an excellent job of bringing order to the chaos that is the information security industry. It leads off with an analogy - you would never have a grocery store with food piled on the floor; instead they organize it into aisles so you can easily find what you are looking for no matter what you want to cook. Yet in our modern day cybersecurity landscape, everything from vendor products to open source packages are marketed with buzzwords and hype that change regularly. It becomes difficult to know what you already have or where a new product or solution might fit into your future plans.The CDM enables you to quickly and easily map that landscape for your own purposes. For all of your investments across tech and process - how do they map to the NIST functions? What assets are actually being protected by a given product? Extrapolating that - you can have a view into where your investment dollars in people/process/technology are going, and why. Where might we have gaps and how should we think about those relative to the mission of protecting the organization?The other thing I like about the CDM is you can get started very quickly with nothing more than an Excel sheet. Over time you can start to mature your thinking to include assets that belong to others - for example third parties that you rely upon and even assets owned or operated by a given attacker. You can grow from a simple 2 dimensional matrix in Excel to a complex 3 dimensional graph in something like Neo4J.Great job on this book, it's very much a worthwhile read if you are involved in the Cybersecurity industry and are looking to introduce more order to the chaos. It also gives you a lens to challenge both your existing and potentially new solution providers as to their near-term and future focus areas.

Regardless of your experience and education level, this book provides insight on an innovative no-cost risk model for cybersecurity or information security program.An excellent read for all cybersecurity professionals!

The title says it all. Well worth the price.

Security practitioners need frameworks with longevity, but long-lasting frameworks are hard to find in such a fast-changing field. Digital transformation has created an industry that's evolved much more quickly than actual best practice, leaving security practitioners grasping for simple frameworks that can be shared with their board, their teams, and their students.It's impossible to use outdated security frameworks to justify best practice when these frameworks don't reflect our cloud-native realities. It's ineffective to use complex or outdated frameworks when petitioning the board of directors to invest in security, unless your goal is to get a budget increase of zero dollars.I firmly believe that Sounil Yu has created the one framework to rule them all with his cyber defense matrix, which he first debuted at the 2019 RSAC. His framework has already demonstrated broad applicability and serious lasting power, and it's now available in book form. There are a nearly infinite number of use cases for the defense matrix, including several use cases I've personally used the cyber defense matrix myself:Designing security metrics dashboardsCreating multi-year roadmaps for security investmentAnalyzing security portfolio gaps and recommending tech investmentsI know from first hand experience that CISOs need an accessible framework to share with their board of directors and executive team, since complex risk visualizations can lead to glazed eyes and a lukewarm reception. The cyber defense matrix is every bit as comprehensive as the NIST Common Criteria, but it's split into a handy 5 by 5 grid that non-technical executives can understand. This is a meaningful business benchmark that solves many of the problems associated with the fact security and business leaders don't always speak the same language.I am incredibly impressed at how well Sounil's model scales, and how excellent a job he's done at writing a book that's valuable to everyone. This book should be required reading for undergraduate students who want to pursue careers in security, since it breaks a complex landscape into a tidy grid and delves into important concepts like situational awareness, attack surface, measurement, and security by design. It also yields comprehensive value for the most experienced CISO.Sounil's Cyber Defense Matrix is seminal and it's genuinely on par with works like "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt" and "Reflections on Trusting Trust."

The cybersecurity space is changing quickly, which is why the Cyber Defense Matrix is such a valuable framework and an important book. Dan Geer puts it best in his forward - "It is simple without being simplistic, and sufficiently malleable to outlive the people and technologies you have to organize." This book is an important tool today, and I know it will still be relevant in 10 years.I strongly recommend this book as a resource to all CISOs and everyone who are interested in doing security effectively. It should be part of the curriculum for college students studying security, MIS, CS, or business as well. Sounil did a great job of creating a resource that's valuable and understandable for both business and tech people.

I first learned of Sounil Yu from the book The Fifth Domain in 2019. I've been learning about the Cyberdefense Matrix and the D.I.E. Triad morphing into an Antifragile Infrastructure since then. I truly believe this is the path ahead to stop Ransomware as a Service and other Cyber Attacks. When reading this book, you will realize how much common sense he has clearly laid out in a very consumable manner. As a MSSP, it helps us help our clients understand the gaps and the overlaps of their security posture and gives us a tool which can display where security risks are not at play due to the ephemeral nature of their hardware and software. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand what the heck anyone is talking about regarding Cybersecurity!