Chapter 2: Understanding Your Enemy

Chapter 2

Understanding Your Enemy

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

The Art of War, Sun Tzu

Although Sun Tzu s classic military-strategy text, The Art of War, was written more than 2000 years before computers were invented, many of the statements are relevant to computer security. Figure 2-1 expresses the principle of battle in a binary decision table.

Figure 2-1. Decision table of knowing your enemy and yourself