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Planning for Survivable Networks Review by Howard C. Berkowitz
Survivability is more than Security
Some books grab you from the first page. While I wouldn't call Annlee "Ishmael", as in Moby Dick, I'm reminded of David Kahn's The Codebreakers, opening the 3000 year history of cryptology with the tension of December 7, 1941.
In this case, it opens with the author being rocked by a terrorist-caused explosion. I was surprised, given the current popularity of books about 9/11, that the event took place 20 years ago. A retired Air Force officer, she has dealt with these threats, all over the world, for many years. Her direct command and control experience teaches that there is only a certain level of protection that mission-critical networked applications can provide, without geographic diversity. Below that level is a constant range of tradeoffs, which she identifies in detail.
There are many books that go into great detail on computer and network security techniques, such as firewalls and encryption. While this book identifies these and puts them in their proper context, the strength of this book is what variously could be called a systems, business or economic justification for survivability, based on a solid technical and economic foundation.
Consider the title carefully -- it's not planning "secure" networks, but planning "survivable" networks. Many networks in the World Trade Center complex were secure, but not survivable for reasons such as having their backups in the other tower. Even in an era where we worry about terrorism, there's far too little attention given to ordinary fire, flood, and other natural disasters. People have told me that the discussion of floor drains to cope with fire sprinklers or firefighting elsewhere in the building is something they never thought about until they read my book, _Building Service Provider Networks_.
I highly recommend this book as a different way of ensuring business and technology continuity, in a world with hacker, terrorist, criminal, and natural threats -- as well as the traditional Murphy's Law inspirations of software and hardware bugs, as well as human error.