Wm. Arthur Conklin, CompTIA Security+, CISSP, is an assistant professor in the University of Houston's Department of Information and Logistics Technology. Gregory White, CompTIA Security+, CISSP, is an associate professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Department of Computer Science.

CompTIA Security+ All-in-One Exam Guide covers all objectives on the CompTIA Security+ test SY0-601 in detail. This authoritative book, written by a team of prominent information security professionals, comprehensively addresses the skills required to execute fundamental security duties and safeguard hardware, systems, and software. Each chapter begins with learning objectives, exam advice, sample exam questions, and in-depth explanations. This complete volume is designed to help you pass the exam with ease and also acts as a crucial on-the-job reference.

Exam domains covered include:

• Vulnerabilities, Threats, and Attacks
• Implementation of Architecture and Design Operations and Incident Response
• Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance

Online material includes the following:

• 250 test practice questions
• Full-length practice tests and customisable quizzes by chapter or exam domain are provided via the test engine.

Author: Arthur Conklin and Gregory White

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Certification-Guide-SY0-601/dp/1260464008/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 469 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #15,436 in Books

#2 in Computer Cryptography

#2 in Web Encryption

#4 in Privacy & Online Safety

Cambridge University awarded Simon Singh a Ph.D. in physics. He was a former BBC producer who directed and co-produced an award-winning documentary film about Fermat's Last Theorem, which broadcast on PBS's Nova series and served as the premise for his best-selling book, Fermat's Enigma.

Simon Singh gives the first comprehensive history of encryption, charting its growth and uncovering the enormous effects codes have had on armies, nations, and individual lives in his first book since the bestseller Fermat's Enigma. The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy, from Mary, Queen of Scots, who was trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logistical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure.

There are detailed technical and mathematical explanations throughout the narrative, as well as portraits of the exceptional individuals who wrote and broke the world's most challenging codes. The Code Book will forever change your perspective on history and what drives it. It is accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching. It will also make you worry how secure that e-mail you just sent is.

Author: Simon Singh

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography/dp/0385495323/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 1308 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #20,437 in Books

#4 in Computer Cryptography

#4 in Web Encryption

#17 in Linguistics Reference

Jon Erickson has a formal background in computer science and travels the world speaking at computer security conferences. In Northern California, he works as a cryptologist and security professional.

Hacking is the art of issue solving through creativity, whether it's finding an alternative solution to a challenging problem or exploiting flaws in careless programming. Many people call themselves hackers, but few have the technical basis required to truly push the boundaries.

Author Jon Erickson explains how obscure hacking techniques work rather than simply teaching how to run current exploits. Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition covers the principles of C programming from a hacker's perspective in order to share the art and science of hacking in a way that is accessible to everyone.

The bundled LiveCD provides a full Linux development and debugging environment without requiring any changes to your current operating system. Use it to follow along with the examples in the book as you cover knowledge gaps and experiment with hacking techniques on your own. Get your hands dirty debugging code, overflowing buffers, hijacking network traffic, circumventing security, exploiting cryptographic flaws, and possibly designing new attacks.

Among the best books on cryptography, this book will teach you how to do the following:

• C, assembly language, and shell scripts are used to program machines.
• Using buffer overflows and format strings, corrupt system memory to run arbitrary code.
• Debug processor registers and system memory to acquire a true grasp of what is going on
• Outwit traditional security mechanisms such as nonexecutable stacks and intrusion detection systems
• Use port-binding or connect-back shellcode to get access to a remote server, and change a server's logging behavior to conceal your existence.
• Hijack TCP connections, redirect network traffic, and conceal open ports
• The FMS attack is used to crack encrypted wireless traffic, and a password probability matrix is used to speed up brute-force attacks.

Hackers are constantly pushing the envelope, exploring the unknown, and perfecting their craft. Even if you have no prior programming experience, Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of programming, machine architecture, network communications, and existing hacking techniques. When you combine this knowledge with the supplied Linux environment, all you need is your own imagination.

Author: Jon Erickson

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Art-Exploitation-Jon-Erickson/dp/1593271441/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 1179 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #20,953 in Books

#5 in Computer Cryptography

#5 in Web Encryption

#8 in Privacy & Online Safety

Eric Conrad is a Senior SANS teacher and the CTO of Backshore Communications, which provides consultancy services in information warfare, hunt teaming, penetration testing, incident handling, and intrusion detection.

Seth Misenar is a SANS Institute certified instructor and the chief consultant for Context Security, which is based in Jackson, Mississippi.

SAIC, Inc. currently employs Joshua Feldman. Since 2002, he has been a member of the Department of Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Information Assurance Education, Training, and Awareness program, where he has contributed to a number of DoD-wide Information Assurance and Cyber Security policies, specifically the 8500.2 and 8570 series.

The third edition of Eleventh Hour CISSP®: Study Guide provides readers with a study guide for the most recent version of the Certified Information Systems Security Professional test. This book has been condensed to include only key certification knowledge and is intended for last-minute study. The exam's main objectives are covered clearly, with significant concepts underlined.

The CISSP is the most prestigious, globally recognized, and vendor-neutral exam for information security professionals. Over 100,000 professionals worldwide are certified, with many more entering their ranks. The material in the most recent version of the exam's Common Body of Knowledge is covered in this updated third edition. All domains are covered as thoroughly and clearly as possible, providing users with the best opportunity of passing the exam.

Author: Seth Misenar, Eric Conrad and Joshua Feldman

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0128112484/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 989 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #37,076 in Books

#3 in Content Management

#6 in Management Information Systems

#13 in Computer Cryptography

Andreas is an enthusiastic technologist who is well-versed in a wide range of technological issues. He is a serial entrepreneur in technology, having founded companies in London, New York, and California. He graduated from UCL with degrees in Computer Science, Data Communications, and Distributed Systems.

Join the technological revolution that is sweeping the financial world. Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly difficult world of bitcoin, providing you with the information you need to participate in the money internet. Whether you're creating the next great app, investing in a company, or simply curious about the technology, this redesigned and extended second edition has everything you need to get started.

Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its infancy, yet it has already generated a multibillion-dollar global economy. Anyone with the necessary knowledge and enthusiasm can engage in this economy. The knowledge is provided by Mastering Bitcoin, one of the best books on cryptography. You merely provide the passion.

The second edition includes the following:

• A general introduction to bitcoin that is appropriate for non-technical users, investors, and business executives.
• A technical explanation of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, software and systems architects, and others.
• Bitcoin decentralized network details, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principles
• Segregated Witness, Payment Channels, and Lightning Network are examples of new innovations.
• Key, address, and wallet explanations have been improved.
• Key technical ideas are illustrated via user stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets.

Author: Andreas Antonopoulos

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 878 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #23,200 in Books

#3 in Business Finance

#5 in E-Commerce (Books)

#7 in Computer Cryptography

CAMPBELL R. HARVEY, PHD, is a Duke University Distinguished Professor of Finance and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Since 2013, he has been a blockchain education pioneer, winning the UBRI Global Blockchain Educator of the Year award in 2020.

Dragonfly Capital's General Partner is ASHWIN RAMACHANDRAN. He is a Duke University graduate.

Fei Labs was founded by JOEY SANTORO. He is a Duke University graduate.

Governments bailed out the very institutions that had harmed the economy. This incident prompted a thorough rethinking of our financial structure. Does it make sense that a stock transaction takes two days to settle? Why should businesses, which operate on razor-thin margins, have to pay 3% for every credit card swipe from a customer? Why does transferring money from a bank account to a brokerage—or any other company—take two days? Why are savings rates so low or even negative? Why are traditional banks making it so tough for startups to obtain financing?

Campbell R. Harvey, Ashwin Ramachandran, and Joey Santoro introduce the new world of DeFi and the Future of Finance in DeFi and the Future of Finance. The book contends that the current financial landscape is ripe for disruption, and that we are witnessing the reinvention of finance in real time.

The writers give the reader a thorough appraisal of the current financial system's flaws and how DeFi solves many of them. The basis of DeFi is that we interact with peers—there is no brick and mortar and all of the expenditures that go along with it. Savings and lending are being reimagined. Trading is done with algorithms that are far apart from traditional brokerages.

The book delves into some of the most cutting-edge protocols, including Uniswap and Compound. Many of the businesses included in the book you may not have heard of, but you will in the future.

As with any new technology, there are a plethora of hazards, which the writers meticulously list and determine which can be successfully addressed.

DeFi and the Future of Finance provides readers with a glimpse of the future and is ideal for anyone working in any section of the finance industry as well as financial policymakers. Over the next decade, the financial sector will be dramatically altered. Among the best books on cryptography, the book teaches you how to become a part of the disruption rather than a victim of it.

Author: Campbell R. Harvey

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/DeFi-Future-Finance-Campbell-Harvey/dp/1119836018/

Ratings: 4.2 out of 5 stars (from 296 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #25,483 in Books

#2 in Banking (Books)

#4 in Business Finance

#9 in Web Encryption

Jean-Philippe Aumasson is the Principal Research Engineer at Kudelski Security, a Swiss-based worldwide cybersecurity firm. He has published over 40 academic papers in the field of cryptography and cryptanalysis, and he invented the widely used hash algorithms BLAKE2 and SipHash. He frequently lectures at information security conferences, including Black Hat, DEF CON, Troopers, and Infiltrate.

This practical primer to current encryption deconstructs the essential mathematical concepts at the heart of cryptography without avoiding in-depth examinations of how they function. Authenticated encryption, secure randomness, hash functions, block ciphers, and public-key approaches such as RSA and elliptic curve cryptography will be covered.

You'll also learn:

• Key cryptographic principles including computational security, attacker models, and forward secrecy
• The strengths and limitations of the TLS protocol that powers HTTPS secure websites
• Quantum computation and post-quantum cryptography
• Examining several code examples and use cases to learn about potential flaws
• How to select the appropriate algorithm or protocol and ask the correct questions of vendors

Each chapter discusses major implementation blunders using real-world examples, detailing what might go wrong and how to prevent these issues.

Serious Cryptography will provide a comprehensive examination of current encryption and its applications, whether you're a seasoned practitioner or a newcomer eager to get started.

Author: Jean-Philippe Aumasson

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Serious-Cryptography-Practical-Introduction-Encryption/dp/1593278268/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 298 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #41,318 in Books

#16 in Web Encryption

#18 in Computer Cryptography

#18 in Privacy & Online Safety

Andrew Hoffman works at Salesforce.com as a senior product security engineer, where he is in charge of the security of numerous JavaScript, NodeJS, and OSS teams. His specialization is in deep DOM and JavaScript security flaws.

While there are several resources on network and IT security, specific knowledge of modern web application security has been lacking—until now. Among the best books on cryptography, Web Application Security teaches software engineers both offensive and defensive security techniques that are simple to learn and practice.

Salesforce's Andrew Hoffman, a senior security engineer, outlines three pillars of online application security: recon, offense, and defense. You'll learn how to conduct successful research and analysis on modern web apps, particularly ones to which you don't have direct access. You'll also learn how to use cutting-edge hacking techniques to get access to web apps. Finally, you'll learn how to create mitigations for usage in your own online apps to keep hackers out.

• Investigate the most frequent vulnerabilities affecting today's online apps.
• Learn the main hacking techniques used by attackers to exploit apps.
• Document and map web applications to which you do not have direct access.
• Create and deploy bespoke exploits that can circumvent typical defenses.
• Create and implement mitigations to safeguard your applications from hackers.
• Integrate best practices for secure coding throughout your development lifecycle.
• Learn practical techniques for improving the overall security of your web apps.

Author: Andrew Hoffman

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Web-Application-Security-Exploitation-Countermeasures/dp/1492053112/

Ratings: 4.4 out of 5 stars (from 103 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #71,902 in Books

#15 in Mobile App Development & Programming

#21 in Web Services

#31 in Web Encryption

Al Sweigart is a professional software developer who teaches both children and adults how to code. He is the No Starch Press author of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, and Scratch Programming Playground.

Learn Python programming while creating and breaking ciphers—algorithms used to create and send encrypted messages!

Following a short course in Python programming fundamentals, you'll learn to create, test, and hack programs that encrypt text using classical ciphers such as the transposition cipher and Vigenère cipher. You'll start with simple programs for the reverse and Caesar ciphers and progress to public key cryptography, which is used to secure today's online transactions such as digital signatures, email, and Bitcoin.

Each program provides the complete source code as well as a line-by-line description of how things function. You'll have learned how to code in Python by the conclusion of the book, and you'll have the creative programs to prove it!

In Cracking Codes with Python, you'll also discover how to:

• Construct real-world programs by combining loops, variables, and flow control instructions.
  
• Use dictionary files to determine if decrypted messages are valid English or nonsense in real time.
• Create test programs to ensure that your code correctly encrypts and decrypts.
• Code (and hack!) a functioning example of the affine cipher, which encrypts a message using modular arithmetic - Break ciphers using brute-force and frequency analysis techniques.

Playing with real programs is the best method to learn to code. Cracking Codes with Python makes learning enjoyable!

Author: Al Sweigart

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Codes-Python-Introduction-Building/dp/1593278225/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 340 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #113,348 in Books

#44 in Web Encryption

#47 in Computer Cryptography

#62 in Software Testing

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christof Paar is Chair for Embedded Security at the University of Bochum in Germany and Adjunct Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the United States. Prof. Paar has been teaching cryptography to engineering and computer science students in the United States and Europe for 15 years, and he has also taught numerous industrial practitioners at firms such as Motorola, Philips, and NASA.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. January Pelzl began his professional career at Bosch Telecom GmbH. He has a Ph.D. in applied cryptography and has studied the practical elements of elliptic-curve-based cryptography and cryptanalysis as a researcher.

Cryptography is now ubiquitous; we see cryptographic techniques implemented in Web browsers, e-mail programs, cell phones, manufacturing systems, embedded software, smart buildings, cars, and even medical implants, in addition to traditional environments such as government communications and banking systems. Today's designers require a thorough understanding of applied cryptography.

Following an introduction to cryptography and data security, the authors explain the main techniques in modern cryptography, with chapters addressing stream ciphers, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and 3DES, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), block ciphers, the RSA cryptosystem, public-key cryptosystems based on the discrete logarithm problem, elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC), digital signatures, hash functions, Message (PKI). The authors focus on communicating the essentials while keeping the mathematics to a minimum throughout the book, and they move quickly from explaining the foundations to describing practical implementations, including recent topics such as lightweight ciphers for RFIDs and mobile devices, as well as current key-length recommendations.

The authors have substantial expertise teaching practical cryptography to engineering and computer science students and professionals, and they employ examples, puzzles, and chapter reviews extensively, while the book's website includes slides, projects, and links to other resources. Understanding Cryptography is appropriate for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses, as well as self-study by engineers. It is one of the best books on cryptography.

Author: Christof Paar and Jan Pelzl

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Cryptography-Textbook-Students-Practitioners/dp/3642446493/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 313 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #146,042 in Books

#18 in Circuit Design

#23 in Computer Programming Structured Design

#29 in Information Theory