Praise for The Metrics Manifesto

“We all collectively and urgently need to improve cybersecurity metrics and outcomes, and this book eliminates common excuses that data isn’t available or is too hard to interpret. Its ideas are specific and can be actioned upon quickly by cybersecurity product builders as well as CISOs.”

—ANN IRVINE, Chief Data Scientist, Resilience Insurance

“Richard has pushed boundaries again, this time in how to think about the performance of security versus just the deployment of security. Understanding our attack surface and how we are actually exposed takes a new way of thinking, and The Metrics Manifesto is that playbook.”

—SEAN CATLETT, Chief Security Officer, Slack

“Relying on heuristics or leveraging antiquated security compliance frameworks to address complex systems such as an organization’s security program is no longer cutting it today. To that end, The Metrics Manifesto is not simply a cookbook for security metrics, but also an eloquent and effective framework to help manage cyber security risks in the 21st century.”

—MARIO DUARTE, Vice President, Security, Snowflake

“This is a must-read for anyone looking to start or mature a security metrics program. Richard Seiersen’s unique brand of storytelling, wit, and domain expertise once again makes a complex subject accessible and easy to understand for security practitioners and business leaders alike.”

— TONY MARTIN-VEGUE, Society of Information Risk Analysts (SIRA) board member and Chair of the San Francisco chapter of the FAIR Institute

“As the quip goes, in God we trust, all others must bring data. Richard’s manifesto is a must-read for those who embrace this philosophy and want to apply it to an oft-misguided belief that our security controls work as intended.”

— SOUNIL YU, CISO, JupiterOne; Former Chief Security Scientist, Bank of America; and Creator of the Cyber Defense Matrix

“The Metrics Manifesto helps to answer that ever important question of ‘How do you know?’, not beyond the shadow of a doubt but in direct confrontation and embracement of doubt. It’s a toolkit for any defender looking to advance from safe to safe(ER), moving beyond hope as a strategy and landing squarely into the capability of trust AND verify.”

— ANNE MARIE ZETTLEMOYER, Vice President, Security Engineering, Payments Industry

Security professionals are trained skeptics. They poke and prod at other people’s digital creations, expecting them to fail in unexpected ways. Shouldn’t that same skeptical power be turned inward? Shouldn’t practitioners ask: “How do I know that my enterprise security capabilities work? Are they scaling, accelerating, or slowing as the business exposes more value to more people and through more channels at higher velocities?” This is the start of the modern measurement mindset—the mindset that seeks to confront security with data.

The Metrics Manifesto: Confronting Security with Data delivers an examination of security metrics with R, the popular open-source programming language and software development environment for statistical computing. This insightful and up-to-date guide offers readers a practical focus on applied measurement that can prove or disprove the efficacy of information security measures taken by a firm.

The book’s detailed chapters combine topics like security, predictive analytics, and R programming to present an authoritative and innovative approach to security metrics. The author and security professional examines historical and modern methods of measurement with a particular emphasis on Bayesian Data Analysis to shed light on measuring security operations.

Readers will learn how processing data with R can help measure security improvements and changes as well as help technology security teams identify and fix gaps in security. The book also includes downloadable code for people who are new to the R programming language.

Perfect for security engineers, risk engineers, IT security managers, CISOs, and data scientists comfortable with a bit of code, The Metrics Manifesto offers readers an invaluable collection of information to help professionals prove the efficacy of security measures within their company.