Product Description
Information systems security continues to grow and change based on new technology and Internet usage trends. In order to protect your organization's confidential information, you need information on the latest trends and practical advice from an authority you can trust. The new ISSO Guide is just what you need.

Information Systems Security Officer's Guide, Second Edition, from Gerald Kovacich has been updated with the latest information and guidance for information security officers. It includes more information on global changes and threats, managing an international information security program, and additional metrics to measure organization performance. It also includes six entirely new chapters on emerging trends such as high-tech fraud, investigative support for law enforcement, national security concerns, and information security consulting.

This essential guide covers everything from effective communication to career guidance for the information security officer. You'll turn to it again and again for practical information and advice on establishing and managing a successful information protection program.

* Six new chapters present the latest information and resources to counter information security threats
* Every chapter contains opening objectives and closing summaries to clarify key points
* Accessible, easy-to-read style for the busy professional ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Good information, very dry
This book has good information but is very, very dry. I had to fight very hard to not fall asleep at times.

Kovacich does make some very good points about balancing the information security needs with the needs of the business. He also stress that information security needs to utilize existing business processes and be aligned with the goals of the organization. This is the best material he provides and details in several chapters.

Incoherent gobblydegook
There's simply nothing useful in this book. One would have to have never heard of the Internet or the Web, and never to have worked anywhere, to benefit from it. The author repeats infosec and management bromides ad nauseum, waves the bloody flag of 9/11 to puff up the importance of the field, and introduces new acronyms faster than the Pentagon.

It's also frequently incomprehensible, due to the author's poor control of English grammar.

If you're in infosec, don't let your bosses read this -- they may think you're as full of hot air as Kovacich.

Also note that at least 3 of the 5 star reviews below are by sometime coauthors of Kovacich.

Not for the INFOSEC professional
I personally think this book (actually having read it impartially) is not good for any Information Security professional, corporate or government (IA, IAM, IASO, ISSO, ect), but, if you had to place it in any category I guess it would be in the business management end of communication compliance (maybe for a Policy Compliance Officer).Also I really think that some of the other reviewers here must have been working to promote this book.I unfortunately say this because the author creates entirely too many unique and extremely complex management policy theories on communication development, which frankly gets way off the subject of INFOSEC, and even has him chasing his own tail in the narrated scenarios.The author even goes so far as to concoct and create possibly 20-30 new acronyms (as if you didn't have enough already as a real INFOSEC professional), which almost became a little comedic by the end of the book, especially when hearing even the author try recap each chapter and make each new theory tie into another new theory.Although I'm sure the author is a very distinguished professional in his own right, I unfortunately found this book weak to incorporate into any of my perceived Information Security plans.Do yourself a favor and skip this one and move onto the next, and make sure the books you choose on this topic do not try to reinvent the wheel.

The Security Officers must have book
Once again Dr. Kovacich has excelled.He has produced an updated version of already 'must have' book for any information security officer.It is the sort of book that is useful to both the experienced information security officer and to the person who is new to the area.The book is written in a format that makes it very readable and also that you can easily find that piece of information that you can remember seeing but can't exactly recall where..

I wish that he had been writing this type of book when I first started out in the Infosec field. If you only buy one information security book - make sure it is this one.

Practitioner's perspective
Dr. Kovacich has updated one of the classic management works for the people who are responsible for the overal design, development and delivery of a comprehensive, enterprise-wide protection program.There are lots of books out there that will assist those who have technical responsibilities for security in doing a better job.There are very few that help develop the manager's who must harmonize people, processes and technology to address the rapidly increasing range of risks that can impact organizations that are all becoming ever more dependent on information technology to accomplish their objectives.If you are now or aspire to be a manager or director of information security for an organization this is an essential guidebook that will advise and assist you in meeting the challenges inherent in that role. ... Read more

Product Description
From the rise of the WNBA to the newly-crowned women'sWorld Cup champions, female athletes are proving they can be every bitas talented and hard-working as their male counterparts. Yet even aswe gear up to greet the new millenium, the old questions remain: Arewomen really as competitive as men? How do men's and women'sperspectives on sports differ? Is one viewpoint more productive thanthe other?

In his new book, A Woman's Touch, author David Canning Epperson usesanecdote, evidence and testimony to bring to light the beginning of anew era in athletics, a melding of male and female perspectives thatwill guide sports policies and practices into the 21stcentury. Whether you belong to the Culture of Conquest, the Culture ofCare, or fall somewhere in between, this is one book no one involvedin the sports experience--and no student of sociology or women'sstudies--can afford to miss. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

A summary look at the systematized theory behind Norman's usability analyses
Where The Design of Everyday Things is device-centered, this work analyzes device interaction with a similar degree of rigor but from a user perspective. Norman divides interaction into experiential and reflective modes while considering the strengths and weaknesses of humans and machines. Concluding that human strengths are pattern recognition, perception with spatial navigation and manipulation, and narration and that human weaknesses are poor memory for detail along with a vulnerability to tunnel vision, Norman proposes three guiding principles for design. The first two, the naturalness principle and the perceptual principle, respect human strengths. The former insists that a device's surface representation maps to its internal state in a comprehensible way. The perceptual principle insists that a device convey these state changes by perceptible changes, i.e. visually and aurally. These principles seem to follow directly from the affordances and feedback Norman emphasizes in The Design of Everyday Things.

Alternatively, Norman's third, most novel, principle follows his analysis of human weaknesses. This appropriateness principle insists that machines provide exactly the info needed for a task, i.e. they should limit the detail of their reports and hide the method, though not the organization, of storing information. According to Norman, by following all these principles designers can produce devices that informate rather than automate, i.e. complement humans rather than substitute for humans. However, Norman laments that it is often easier for designers to allow machine needs for accuracy, quantifiable metrics and their insensitivity to physical constraints or user needs to drive design and thereby produce hard technology, which forces users to accommodate the machine, rather than soft technology, which shapes the machine to serve user needs.

The arguments of this work seem more theoretical and less practical than those of The Design of Everyday Things. Further, most of the practical advice and applications of this work appear with greater detail in that book. Consequently, this work may be more gratifying to readers interested in psychology, including learning, as well as artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, Norman's distinction between experiential and reflective modes of interaction is underdeveloped in this work, only to be expanded in the subsequent Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things.

Book That Makes Us Smart? Maybe.
"Things That Make Us Smart" is Don Norman professing his thoughts on how technologies serve as cognitive artifacts, from past to present. There is a lot of repetition and extraneous information including Norman's thoughts on forecasting technology trends. If you have read "The Design of Everyday Things," there will be familiar ideas. Likewise, I found that the last two chapters("Soft and Hard Technology" and "Technology is Not Neutral") to be very similar to Norman's ideas in "The Design of Future Things". For Information Science folks, the chapter called "A Place for Everything, and Everything in It's Place" might be of skimming interest; in it, Norman writes about workspace organization, and touches on information retrieval, though his views concerning the latter subject have been somewhat superseded by current search engine technologies. For me, "Things That Make Us Smart" was most fascinating when Norman spoke in chapter two(and other places) about cognition; experiential and reflective thought, and how technology can elicit each.

"Things That Make Us Smart" is typical Donald Norman; take the idea of a human-centered approach to technology and run with it. For those seeking an introduction to Norman, forgo this book in favor of "The Design of Everyday Things." For those familiar with Norman's ideas, skim at your leisure.

Too many superficial generalizations
This book was one of the required readings for a class I took years ago on Humans, Computer and Cognition.Unfortunately, I did not think highly of Donald Norman's opinions because I felt many of them were simply over generalizations.Perhaps this is because I have a background in psychology that includes learning and motivation.I found myself disagreeing with many of Norman's statements and routinely asking, "What evidence is he basing that on?"

Getting outdated
Originally written in 1995, many of the technologies talked about in the book are either developed already, shown to be not useful, or used in ways not originally foreseen - therefore making many of the arguments irrelevant.
For instance, he talks about caller ID and how it's not THAT useful to know the phone number, because it doesn't identify a person, but just a phone.Well, with the rise of cellular phone usage, a person's phone number has indeed become their ID.

However, the best part of the book comes in the beginning and the end, when he discusses the precise differences in what humans are good at doing versus what machines are good at doing.He points out the disconnect between these two worlds are viewed by each, but doesn't really give any suggestions as to how to overcome the problems it creates.

Humanity for Dummies
Yet another tome about the greatness of human qualities and the belief that machines do not and will not achieve these? Yes but with a little more aplomb and erudition that most in the field. There is not a "we are doomed" mood to this book and the author seems to prefer explication over prophecies of a machine world.

But a lot of what is covered is not only known but well-known. Who thinks that Big Blue is actually "thinking" in his various chess tournaments?Norman talks endlessly about misconceptions concerning the computer world, beliefs held (he thinks) by a sizeable number of intelligent people.It is because the PC so aptly simulates human behavior that we hold such views in the first place.

And while such subjects as art, music, learning, ritual, satire, and recognition of such subjective qualities as good, bad, beautiful, ugly, and appropriate are today solely human qualities, who knows at what point in the future that humans may program their machines to simulate some or all of the above?
A majority of the book is spent explaining why this cannot happen.

A discussion of the difference in human associative brains and the mechanicsm of machine computation has been noted numerous times before.In fact, it makes perfect sense that the two shall never meet.Human thought is based on sensory perception with the real world - something a machine cannot partake in at the present.We require vision, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling in order to formulate a world view. Until machines can develop a mechanism for simulating these experiences, we will experience only what smartly programmed machines are told to do. ... Read more

Product Description
This valuable book, written specifically for library and information science professionals, presents 125 case studies that combine theories of ethics and librarianship with practical, real-life scenarios. After an introduction to ethics in library and information science, chapters are devoted to ethical issues in five categories: intellectual freedom, privacy, intellectual property, professional ethics, and intercultural information ethics.
Each chapter has a theoretical introduction to the issue under consideration followed by 25 case studies, each of which includes its own set of discussion questions. Perfectly suited to classroom use, these case studies help bridge the complicated gap between students, academics, and practitioners in the field by promoting critical thinking and responsible action. ... Read more

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US Country Study Guide ... Read more

Product Description
Television is one of the most important socializing forces in contemporary culture. This book is a cultural history of prime-time television in America during the 1990s.

• Examines changes that took place in programming, such as the rapid adoption of cable, the proliferation of content providers, the development of niche marketing, the introduction of high-definition television, the blurring of traditional genres, and the creation of new formats like reality-based programming
  
• Argues that television programmes of the 1990s afforded viewers a symbolic resource for negotiating the psychological challenges associated with the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age
  
• Explores the ways in which television provided viewers with tools for coming to terms with their fears about living in the fast-paced , increasingly diverse, information-laden society of the 90s

Customer Reviews (1)

Brilliant...
a former college textbook that I have treasured for years.I also have maintained a correspondence with the writer and his wife.

He is as good of a writer as a professor! ... Read more

Product Description
This text aims to prepare students for New CLAIT and CLAIT plus, whilst simulataneously providing useful skills and questions to test learning and reinforce understanding. The use of ICT is examined in five business areas in a way to provide background knowledge needed for cases study and exams. ... Read more

Product Description
This text explores the evolution of complex industrial systems over time by examining technological and market developments in the computer, telecommunications and semiconductor industries. An integrated theoretical framework is developed by Professor Duysters to study the relationship between technological change, changing industry structures, and innovation strategies by several categories of company. This is followed by an indepth empirical analysis of technological convergence, strategic technology partnering and globalization - three major factors in the development of information technology over the past decade. This work is an attempt to quantitatively measure the technological convergence process in information technology. Providing new insights on the internationalization of research and development, this analysis of recent and historical developments in the information technology industry provides new insights which should be welcomed by scholars and practitioners interested in international business, techonological change and innovation management. ... Read more

Product Description
Designed specifically with revision in mind, the CIM Revision Cards provide concise, yet fundamental information to assist students in passing the CIM exams as easily as possible. A clear, carefully structured layout aids the learning process and ensures the key points are covered in a succinct and accessible manner. The compact, spiral bound format enables the cards to be carried around easily, the content therefore always being on hand, making them invaluable resources no matter where you are.

Features such as diagrams and bulleted lists are used throughout to ensure the key points are displayed as clearly and concisely as possible. Each section begins with a list of learning outcomes and ends with hints and tips, thereby ensuring the content is broken down into manageable concepts and can be easily addressed and memorised.

* Written specifically for revision purposes therefore only featuring the key concepts that need to be learned
* Carefully designed to enable points to be easily extracted and memorised without clouding them in additional information
* Accompanies the CIM Coursebook and MarketingOnline website to provide a complete suite of products to support the CIM qualifications ... Read more

Product Description
For a long time what was on offer to advice peoplewas restricted to joining divinely inspired orpowerful collectives. In the last couple ofcenturies the emphasis has shifted towards beinginformed about the environment in which actions takeplace, irrespective of whether these are good or bad. Further shifts in how action is informed nowemphasise the use of interfaces. The aim of thiswork is to find the point where a suitable referentor validation criterion would be available. In thereport it is argued, theoretically and empirically,that this point is characterised by the notion of aninternally structured and stable collectiveperforming a collective task. This notiondistinguishes members? activities inside acollective that inform each other as well ascontribute to the maintenance of the collective,from collective actions. Knowledge resulting fromthe use of this notion refers to what makes thecollective survive in some environment, and includesknowledge that helps distinguish between (good)actions that contribute to the collective performingits task, and bad ones. ... Read more

Product Description
Whenever you let low-priority tasks get in the way of high-priority tasks, you are procrastinating. Procrastination is the act of putting off doing a task, delaying an activity or task, or ignoring something which demands your attention.

Putting things off inevitably leads to a pile up – too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Whether you procrastinate at home or in the office, the demands that it puts on your time cause stress.

Caution: Your stress level increases as minor tasks pile up and begin to seem larger than they really are.

In this e-book, you will learn many ways to prevent procrastination and its associated stress, and be better able to accomplish both overwhelming and unpleasant tasks with relative ease. You will also learn techniques for more effectively managing the information overload with which you are confronted on a daily basis.
... Read more

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A useful framework for managers making investment decisions in IT projects. The authors show that the characteristics of a project and its organizational environment affect the way investment decisions are handled and indicate which techniques are appropriate. ... Read more

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With the advance of computing technology, Monte Carlo simulation research has become increasingly popular among quantitative researchers in a variety of disciplines. More and more, statistical methods are being subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny in the form of statistical simulation so that their limitations and strengths can be understood. With the combination of powerful built-in statistical procedures and versatile programming capabilities, the SAS System is ideal for conducting Monte Carlo simulation research! SAS for Monte Carlo Studies: A Guide for Quantitative Researchers provides a detailed and practical guide for conducting Monte Carlo studies using the SAS System. Quantitative researchers will find this book attractive for its practicality and for its many hands-on application examples of Monte Carlo research. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Extremely Helpful
I found this book extremely helpful for handling stochasticity with SAS/STAT environment. I have been working on spreadsheets (simulation add-ins) until now for financial modeling but obviously Excel has got limits. SAS has got the best of both worlds - you can write codes for advanced statistics and model a project capturing stochastic and deterministic variables which is why it is better choice than VBA+Excel+Add-ins(like @RISK). Apart from that book is very well written. It is always a pleasure to read scripts of creators themselves. For people in finance this is very helpful if purchased alongwith 'Using SAS in Financial Research'.

An appealing introduction for beginners
Do you know how to generate a (univariate) random normal sample in SAS? How about a sample from the multivariate normal distribution, with an arbitrary correlation matix? How about a sample from gamma, or Poisson distribution, or random variates with given 3rd and 4th moments? How about generating an ARMA series?

If not, the authors will show you how, and provide many examples. If you do, $40 can find better application. Speaking for myself, I was hoping to see a SAS-aided discussion of 'smart' MC techniques, and perhaps of resampling methods. No luck.

Concise and helpful
SAS is still the dominant programming tool in finance despite strong competition from other software packages like Maple and Mathematica. And it remains so despite it being embedded in the paradigm of procedural programming, while these other two packages are representatives of the functional approach to programming. Taste and historical precedence play a large role in the selection of a programming tool, and no doubt part of the reasons for the predominance of SAS. But whatever the reason, SAS is here to stay in the financial community, and of course so are Monte Carlo simulations, which are the topic of this short guide.

As the authors of this book show, Monte Carlo simulations are quite easy to implement in SAS, and one will find within its covers many examples of how to code these simulations in SAS. Due to its date of publication, the code of course reflects an earlier version of SAS, but the differences between it and the current version are small and can be dealt with for the purposes at hand. Monte Carlo simulations have the advantage of being conceptually simple but can take long periods of time to complete. They are usually used to get an understanding of the true population when real data is unavailable or expensive to obtain. There are a few firms on Wall Street that have made it their living to offer packages that allow more "intelligent" implementations of Monte Carlo. These approaches are proprietary of course but are no doubt based on some unique approach to doing variance reduction or importance sampling. One will not find examples of these implementations in this book, but there is plenty of material to keep one busy if one is learning Monte Carlo or SAS, or both, or if one is an expert on Monte Carlo and is teaching it to a class of SAS users. The examples included are straightforward and relatively error free, and one can be readily put into SAS or modified as one sees fit.
... Read more

Product Description
Today's mass media is increasingly accused of stealing our future, killing our culture, and scaring us to death. SCREENED OUT examines why this is happening, who is the culprit, and what we can do about it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good concepts - bad writing & sloppy proofreading
Johnston makes some excellent points about how mass media disenfranchises the poor, handicapped and minorities.However, the book reads more like a rambling rant.I'd give the book two stars if I didn't agree with much of what Johnston says.

For all her credentials - Johnston has had several reseach fellowships at prestigious universities and has written 7 books on mass media - I was suprised at how poorly written this book is. Criticizing mass media is something that, I feel, requires a more balanced calm tone in order to have any affect on people.Mass media is such a built-in factor in our lives that any attempt to make us analyze it needs to appeal to our common sense, not attack us with a polemical attitude.Surely there are better books out there.

Here are some of the problems I found:

About the sources cited in Johnston's book:Are Ed Asner & Michael Dukakis really bona fide commentators on this topic?How about Johnston's liberal use of "unpublished research papers" - my quotes - by media studies students? I counted 25 different student papers cited in the first 2 chapters.It's not clear whether these are undergraduates or graduate students. Many of the quotes taken from those papers are little more than the student's opinion.And then, in her "acknowledgement" section, Johnston merely thanks the student researchers for their "insights."How about thanking all of them by NAME since they contributed so much to writing of this book?I find it really peculiar that she used student papers in this way.

For a quote about how 73 percent of violent acts go un-punished, Johnston quotes an article in Harper's.Wouldn't data from the Bureau for Criminal Justice Statistics or some other official source be more appropriate?I doubt Harper's did their own data gathering to get that factoid.

How about proofreading?I don't know much about M.E. Sharp (the publisher) but obviously they didn't proofread this book very well.The CBS cop show "Martial Law" was referred to as "Marshall Law."A search engine named "Havista" was mentioned in the notes.I think they meant AltaVista, but I can't be sure.

The book is worth reading through, if only to get an idea on how to begin thinking about criticizing mass media.Take it with a grain of salt, though.I can't suggest another book on this topic since it's pretty new to me. ... Read more