The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats

by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

Overview

An urgent new warning from two bestselling security experts—and a gripping inside look at how governments, firms, and ordinary citizens can confront and contain the tyrants, hackers, and criminals bent on turning the digital realm into a war zone.

"In the battle raging between offense and defense in cyberspace, Clarke and Knake have some important ideas about how we can avoid cyberwar for our country, prevent cybercrime against our companies, and in doing so, reduce resentment, division, and instability at home and abroad."—Bill Clinton

There is much to fear in the dark corners of cyberspace. From well-covered stories like the Stuxnet attack which helped slow Iran's nuclear program, to lesser-known tales like EternalBlue, the 2017 cyber battle that closed hospitals in Britain and froze shipping crates in Germany in midair, we have entered an age in which online threats carry real-world consequences. But we do not have to let autocrats and criminals run amok in the digital realm. We now know a great deal about how to make cyberspace far less dangerous—and about how to defend our security, economy, democracy, and privacy from cyber attack.

This is a book about the realm in which nobody should ever want to fight a war: the fifth domain, the Pentagon's term for cyberspace. Our guides are two of America's top cybersecurity experts, seasoned practitioners who are as familiar with the White House Situation Room as they are with Fortune 500 boardrooms. Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake offer a vivid, engrossing tour of the often unfamiliar terrain of cyberspace, introducing us to the scientists, executives, and public servants who have learned through hard experience how government agencies and private firms can fend off cyber threats.

Clarke and Knake take us inside quantum-computing labs racing to develop cyber superweapons; bring us into the boardrooms of the many firms that have been hacked and the few that have not; and walk us through the corridors of the U.S. intelligence community with officials working to defend America's elections from foreign malice. With a focus on solutions over scaremongering, they make a compelling case for "cyber resilience"—building systems that can resist most attacks, raising the costs on cyber criminals and the autocrats who often lurk behind them, and avoiding the trap of overreaction to digital attacks.

Above all, Clarke and Knake show us how to keep the fifth domain a humming engine of economic growth and human progress by not giving in to those who would turn it into a wasteland of conflict. Backed by decades of high-level experience in the White House and the private sector, The Fifth Domain delivers a riveting, agenda-setting insider look at what works in the struggle to avoid cyberwar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525561965
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/16/2019
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	540,402
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Richard A. Clarke is one of the world's leading experts on security, cyberspace, and terrorism. He served in the U.S. government for thirty years, including as White House counterterrorism coordinator under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and became the first White House official placed in charge of U.S. cybersecurity policy. He is the author of eight books (four works of nonfiction and four novels), including the number-one national bestseller Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror.

Robert K. Knake is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a senior research scientist at Northeastern University, and an adviser to startups, investment firms, and Fortune 500 companies. Knake served from 2011-15 in the Obama White House as director for cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council. He is the co-author (with Clarke) of the New York Times bestseller Cyber War.

Table of Contents

Part I The Twenty-Year War 1

1 The Back of the Beast 3

2 EternalBlue, Eternal War 17

Part II The Corporate Frontline 31

3 Two Kinds of Companies? 33

4 The Kill Chain 49

5 The Tech Stack 63

6 Cyber Resilience: The Best Bad Idea We've Got 85

Part III The Government's Supporting Role 107

7 Nudges and Shoves 109

8 Is It Really You? 129

9 Fixing the People Problem 143

10 Power Grids and Power Plays 155

11 Securing the Feds 167

Part IV Warriors, Diplomats, and Candidates 179

12 The Military, Domains, and Dominance 181

13 A Schengen Accord for the Internet 205

14 Democracy's Shield 219

Part V The (Near) Future in Cyberspace 237

15 Real and Artificial Intelligence 239

16 A Quantum of Solace far Security 253

17 5G and IoT 265

Part VI You and the Way Ahead 281

18 Derisking Ourselves 283

19 Everything Done but the Coding 295

Glossary 299

Acknowledgments and Disclosures 309

Notes 313

Index 333

Editorial Reviews

06/03/2019

Clarke and Knake, both cybersecurity consultants and former National Security Council staffers, follow up their 2010 Cyber War with this sobering but hopeful exploration of defenses against the weaponization of the internet. They discuss various hacking menaces to the computer networks that undergird modern life, from credit card fraud to Russian, Iranian, and North Korean military incursions threatening graver damage: ransomware attacks that can put hospitals, drug factories, and shipping firms out of commission; subversion of voting systems that could cause election-day chaos; and commandeering utility computer systems that could destroy electric grids and gas pipelines. The risks are dire but manageable, say the authors, who focus their account on cybersecurity measures at private firms that are waging a complex battle to prevent penetrations, slow and contain hacks, and recover quickly from breaches. (The authors also provide security tips for individuals, including the seldom-heeded “do not use the same password on more than one site.”) Clarke and Knake, drawing on interviews with experts, explain cybersecurity’s intricacies in a lucid, engaging manner that avoids the alarmism that often surrounds the subject. The result is a fine survey that will interest policy makers, executives, and ordinary readers alike. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Group. (July)

Publishers Weekly

A sobering but hopeful exploration of defenses against the weaponization of the internet . . . Clarke and Knake, drawing on interviews with experts, explain cybersecurity’s intricacies in a lucid, engaging manner that avoids the alarmism that often surrounds the subject. The result is a fine survey that will interest policy makers, executives, and ordinary readers alike.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Clarke and Knake, both of whom logged time inside the cybersecurity arms of presidential administrations, have much to say about the ways in which governments and companies have tried to make themselves safe from the legions of hackers out there, from your ordinary black hats to agents of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other entities. . . . The authors counsel reassuringly [that] as companies finally make the transition to more secure systems of transmission, encryption, and data storage, there is hope that the threats of old will one day be a footnote. . . . Largely of interest to policymakers and security experts, though with much for the Wired crowd as well.” —Kirkus Reviews

“In the battle raging between offense and defense in cyberspace, Clarke and Knake have some important ideas about how we can avoid cyberwar for our country, prevent cybercrime against our companies, and in doing so, reduce resentment, division, and instability at home and abroad.”—Bill Clinton
 
“Cyberspace is the battlefield of the future. Our national security is dependent on whether we wake up and recognize the nature of this threat. In The Fifth Domain, Richard Clarke and Robert Knake are issuing a strong wake-up call. As they conclude, ‘what is missing is national consensus, will, and priority setting.’ If we fail to take the necessary steps to defend ourselves, we may lose not just the battle but the war.” —Leon Panetta

“In The Fifth Domain, two of America’s top cybersecurity experts reach a surprising and encouraging conclusion: it is within our power to manage cyber threats. Clarke and Knake offer a wealth of practical and achievable ideas for how the U.S. government, American companies, and private citizens can deter and thwart attacks.”—Susan Rice

From the Publisher

2019-05-07
Hacking, cracking, and stealing, whether elections or state secrets or cash—it's all in a day's work for the bad guys who populate the pages of this treatise on electronic security.

If you're an individual computer user, you can do things to keep yourself secure like using two-factor authentication and secret password phrases. But what if you're a nation-state? Cybersecurity experts Clarke and Knake (co-authors: Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What To Do About It, 2010, etc.), both of whom logged time inside the cybersecurity arms of presidential administrations, have much to say about the ways in which governments and companies have tried to make themselves safe from the legions of hackers out there, from your ordinary black hats to agents of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other entities. The militaries of those nations in particular are actively working to best our cyberdefenses—as the authors write, "the Russian military has not only used cyber weapons to collect intelligence, but has also employed cyber weapons to damage, disrupt, and destroy physical objects in the real world, beyond the realm of 1s and 0s." Does this mean we're at war? Regardless of the answer, the Russians are bad at covering their tracks—that's how we know. Clarke and Knake survey the landscape: As they note, most governments may be bad at hiding information, but Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft "have security budgets that dwarf the GDP of Palau," and the private sector is likely to be the driver behind any real reform in cybersecurity and subsequent hardening of the fortress. Meanwhile, the authors counsel reassuringly, as companies finally make the transition to more secure systems of transmission, encryption, and data storage, there is hope that the threats of old will one day be a footnote. For the moment, the cost of mounting an attack on a bank is vanishingly small compared to the amount the bank is spending on keeping secure, so those attacks will keep coming.

Largely of interest to policymakers and security experts, though with much for the Wired crowd as well.

Kirkus Reviews

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