The 5 Best Information Security Books of 2021

Ben Rothke
4 min readDec 15, 2021
https://imgflip.com/i/5xzxnq

It’s been a year since I wrote The Best Information Security Books of 2020 and 2 years since The Best Information Security Books of 2019. With that, as the year is coming to a close, here is my list of the Best Information Security Books of 2021.

Information security book of the year

A Vulnerable System: The History of Information Security in the Computer Age by Andrew Stewart

Isaac Newton said that “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” The wisdom of countless information security giants is detailed here, and author Andrew Stewart provides a fascinating analysis and history of information security.

Senator Howard Baker asked during Watergate: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” We may think that new has long been known to information security architects when it comes to information security. Security must be engineered into a system if it is to protect data.

Stewart provides an interesting history of the field of security and privacy. He shows that many, if not most, of the security problems we encounter now result from poor security decisions made decades ago.

The foundations of information security were developed half a century ago with the first mainframes…

--

--

Ben Rothke

I work in information security at Tapad. Write book reviews for the RSA blog, & a Founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance and Cybersecurity Canon.