Information Security Analytics: Finding Security Insights, Patterns, and Anomalies in Big Data

Often, you can tell the value of a book by what shape it's in. My copy of A Practical Guide to SysML is pretty beat up. Not only does it have a lot of my own scribbling in the margins and blue and yellow highlighting (blue for things to come back and skim and yellow for things to absolutely visit again), it has coffee, peach and other various stains. This book resides in my brief case (my satchel bag) and goes with me ("A Good Companion") when I have to accompany my wife on errands (if I am 30 minutes in any place I will read a passage or two). With this book and an iPod, I can handle anything including long waits in any airport or any delays anywhere.Sandy and the team do an outstanding job of introducing the reader into one of the most important new System Engineering tools available today; SysML. As pointed out by others, it's not just about software anymore, it often about architectures and the enterprise. As the trends in system development move from platform centric to NetCentric, as work for organizations moves from individuals to collaborative enterprise efforts and as we all try to improve our processes and add value to collaborative efforts, a model of "what we're doing" becomes so important. The team does an outstanding job of presenting the concept of Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) in Chapter 2 and providing a great example to follow in the subsequent chapters. Throughout the book, the explanation of the diagrams and concepts are thorough and easy to understand. I thank the authors for making it interesting and relevant.For those just starting in the field, this book is an outstanding accompaniment to any of the SysML CASE tools that are emerging. In fact, I highly recommend to anybody who is going to be working in the System Engineering field (be it automotive, aerospace, civil engineering, architecture, software, disaster relief, etc.) to keep a copy of this book handy in case you get delayed some place and want make use of some spare time.Frank C. Alvidrez, CEALancaster, CAPost Scrip (Feb 09) - I had the great fortune of attending a two day intense INCOSE sponsored tutorial on SysML taught by Sandy in Old Town Pasadena Nov 08. Wow, what a drink from the knowledge fire hose. Sandy's insight in model organization (using block diagrams for domain modeling) of complex projects was just one stunning eye opener. If anybody gets a chance to attend of one these, do it.- Frank

This is an excellent book, but why is the Kindle version the 2008 edition, while the hardcopy is the 2009 edition? I have both the 2008 and 2009 editions in hardcopy, and there are significant updates. The SysML standard continues to evolve, and this book is evolving with it. The Kindle edition should be the latest and greatest, not an obsolete edition.Updated on 7 Dec 2011:FINALLY! With the 2nd edition the Kindle edition has caught up with the hardcopy. This book is THE indispensable reference, and now I can carry it with me everywhere I work.

I thought it would be a great book given the price. Instead this book is pretty much run through the trendy phrases and hit here and there without any end-to-end practical examples nor well thought out methodology. Waste of time.

This book is a great help to anyone looking to understand how the symbols are used in practical situations.

Getting log data is not an IT challenge. But the information security challenge and a huge struggle for those who are tasked with it, is making sense of a near infinite amount of data.In Information Security Analytics: Finding Security Insights, Patterns, and Anomalies in Big Data, authors Mark Talabis, Robert McPherson, I. Miyamoto and Jason Martin have created a brief guide that shows how you can take the myriad raw data, and turn it into meaningful analytics.The authors focus on the methods that are particularly useful for discovering security breaches and attacks, which can be implemented via either free software, or using commonly available software.Like most titles on data analytics, the book places a heavy influence on R, is a programming language and software environment for statistical computing.The book is a good how-to guide with plenty of coding examples, to show the reader how to effectively use the tools to make sense of the data they have.For those new to the topic of data analytics, Data-Driven Security: Analysis, Visualization and Dashboards by Jay Jacobs and Bob Rudis is the gold-standard on the topic.This book builds on that with an emphasis on information security is a worth a read for those with an interest in the topic.

So far, I have read all of part one and sizeable portions of subsequent text. Part One, about 60 pages long, is one of the best introductions to a very technical book aimed at the semi-technical audience. Through example, easy-to-follow diagrams & well-written English, the authors nearly seduce their readership into wanting to master the remainder of this long systems engineering text focussed on a highly-regard industry standard (OMG SysML). Part one is suitable for assignment as a week's worth of reading in Undergraduate and Graduate courses in Systems Engineering.