Synopsis
Dark Territory was an interesting history of how the U.S. government has approached information security from Reagan’s era through Obama’s presidency. As the title suggests, most of the focus was on the offensive side of cyber. This meant that a majority of the content was about the NSA. The difficulty of defending against cyber attacks was mentioned many times, however not a lot was said about what was actually done to protect the government’s networks.
My Reaction
Overall, I think this is a great history of cyber at a nation state level. It’s focus and low technical level are great for industry outsiders to get a view of nation state cyber operations. It’s details into policies and agencies is great for industry insiders.
Reading this novel would give good foundational knowledge that would make reading novels on direct topics a bit easier to frame. For instance, learning about what went wrong and what happened in cases such as Snowden, Wikileaks, or StuxNet would be easier to understand with this history in mind.
Recommendation
I recommend this novel if you are a leader in government or industry with even a passing concern about cyber security. It is also an excellent primer for people who are in or getting into the cyber security field in order to learn what the stakes are.
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