Defending against Hackers

Previous chapters have addressed a wide variety of threats and an even wider variety of threat sources. Most people would be having full-on bouts of paranoia about now! The fact is that these threats and threat sources are real, but most of them become a threat source as a secondary matter. For example, an employee doesn’t normally join your organization with the thought of stealing as much as possible from you and then running away. The very few employees that actually do steal something and then run away do it later after they have been in your business for a while. Hackers, on the other hand, start out with the idea of stealing, damaging, or monitoring something in your business. They’ve never had any other idea in mind. The orientation and priority of the attack are why defending against hackers is different from defending against other threats and why the separate treatment in this chapter is important.

Of course, hackers are not superhuman...