Security without Obscurity: A Guide to Confidentiality, Authentication, and Integrity

The traditional view of information security includes the three cornerstones: confidentiality, integrity, and availability; however the author asserts authentication is the third keystone. As the field continues to grow in complexity, novices and professionals need a reliable reference that clearly outlines the essentials. Security without Obscurity: A Guide to Confidentiality, Authentication, and Integrity fills this need.

Rather than focusing on compliance or policies and procedures, this book takes a top-down approach. It shares the author’s knowledge, insights, and observations about information security based on his experience developing dozens of ISO Technical Committee 68 and ANSI accredited X9 standards. Starting with the fundamentals, it provides an understanding of how to approach information security from the bedrock principles of confidentiality, integrity, and authentication.

The text delves beyond the typical cryptographic abstracts of encryption and digital signatures as the fundamental security controls to explain how to implement them into applications, policies, and procedures to meet business and compliance requirements. Providing you with a foundation in cryptography, it keeps things simple regarding symmetric versus asymmetric cryptography, and only refers to algorithms in general, without going too deeply into complex mathematics.

Presenting comprehensive and in-depth coverage of confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation, privacy, and key management, this book supplies authoritative insight into the commonalities and differences of various users, providers, and regulators in the U.S. and abroad.

About the Author

Jeff J. Stapleton has over 30 years experience developing and assessing payment systems and security techniques, including cryptography and biometrics. His career includes the major card brands (MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover) for payment systems and security assessments; big-four accounting firm experience performing security assessments of applications, systems, and products; working with large and medium-sized financial institutions providing risk assessments and security compliance audits; and developing policies, practices, and procedures for security systems.

Jeff has participated in developing ISO and X9 security standards for over 25 years within the financial services industry. For the first five years, he participated on several X9 workgroups and has been an industry liaison and U.S. expert several times for various ISO workgroups. In addition, he has been chair of the X9F4 Cryptographic Protocols and Application Security Workgroup for 15 years. His experience includes participation on several X9 and ISO workgroups and development of over three dozen ISO and X9 standards. Some of the standards have multiple parts, which add to the overall count.

Jeff has published articles in various information security journals, IEEE papers, PKI Forum notes, and is a contributing author to several books on biometrics and cryptography. He is also a patent holder for cryptographic solutions.

Jeff has also authored various white papers for customers on debit card payments, key management, data loss prevention (DLP) solutions, and format-preserving encryption (FPE). He is a CISSP® and former Certified TG-3 Assessor (CTGA®) and PCI Qualified Security Assessor (QSA®). The CTGA and QSA are only viable for security consultants in active practice. He has also been a frequent public speaker at information security conferences, seminars, and webinars.