Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World

All security decisions involve trade-offs: how much security you get, and what you give up to get it. When we decide whether to walk down a dimly lit street, purchase a home burglar alarm system, or implement an airline passenger profiling system, we're making a security trade-off. Everyone makes these trade-offs all the time. It's intuitive and natural, and fundamental to being alive. But paradoxically, people are astonishingly bad at making rational decisions about these trade-offs.

Security expert Bruce Schneier discusses this notion of security trade-offs and how we are all "security consumers." He makes use of a five-step process to explicate these intuitive trade-offs and shows how the process can be applied to decisions both small and large. Learn how security works in the real world, and what you can do to get the security you want . . . not the security that is forced upon you.

Internationally renowned security expert Bruce Schneier has written eight books, including Beyond Fear and Secrets and Lies, as well as the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms. Schneier has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, has testified before Congress, and is a frequent writer and lecturer on issues surrounding security and privacy.