How this Book Is Organized

Even though these audits are real, I begin each chapter with a fictional scenario written in first person. In my corporate work, I've found that a lot of people start to take security seriously only when something happens to their systems, their data, and their company just one of many respects in which the "Me" decade never really ended. I personalize each scenario by placing you, the reader, into the story to transfer the message that this really could happen to your data and your company.

The bulk of each chapter describes the actual security risks that I uncovered during the audit. This section also explains how those risks came to be. You don't just wake up one morning to find that your network security has gone awol. Security breaches usually occur by omission or poor planning executed over long periods of time. These sections explain some ways that can happen.

The last section of each chapter, "Let's Not Go There...," tells you how to avoid the problems in the first place. My hope is that you will read those sections carefully and take the guidelines to heart.