Developing Trust: Online Privacy and Security

Interhack announces the completion of Matt Curtin's new book, Developing Trust: Online Privacy and Security. This book helps developers, operators, and managers of online applications understand build systems worthy of the trust that users tend to place in such systems.

Starting with the need for privacy, the book jumps directly into discussion of how privacy and security are related, and how we can understand these inherently complex topics. Part II contains a discussion of the problem of privacy and security in today's systems. Part III discusses solutions for these problems, noting that neither technology nor policy is the sole solution.

With a Foreword by computer scientist Peter G. Neumann (Author of Computer-Related Risks and Moderator of the ACM Risks Forum), Developing Trust helps bridge the gap between the advances made in research and the lack of trustworthiness in today's commercial systems. Highlights include a discussion of the well-established Saltzer-Schroeder secure design principles, several case studies in failure, a description of why opt-out systems cannot protect privacy, and presentation of Napersnik, a privacy-aware system for serving third-party content.

Available November 27, 2001, Developing Trust is published by Apress and can be purchased directly from Springer Verlag and Amazon.com, as well as fine bookstores everywhere. A sample chapter is also available from Apress, discussing secure design principles.

Reviewers seem to agree that the material is well-suited for developers who need to understand how to build systems worthy of trust, especially if those developers do not have a lot of security expertise already.

Quite valuable...developers will neither be snowed under by esoteric discussions nor left with too many vulnerabilities uncovered.
 --Rob Slade

Definitive work...destined to become a classic.
 --Mike Tarrani

An important resource...Entertaining and easy to read.
 --Ben Rothke