Introducing Machine Learning Security Principles

Are you a manager, researcher, or novice data scientist who works with data regularly, yet can’t really understand the technobabble found in security books that are supposed to help you secure the data you work with? Machine Learning Security Principles is all about providing you with full disclosure of all of the security threats that can affect your data in a detailed way that is also understandable. The idea is to understand the threats and understand the players in the security arena so you can create a strategy that will ensure your data remains safe without feeling completely lost in the language used by most books today.

Machine Learning Security Principles looks at data from every possible perspective, which means that you’ll learn more than just collection and storage methods. It isn’t just the hackers and disgruntled employees that are the problem. You now have to deal with governments that tell you how to collect data properly and face the wrath of the pubic at large when the data is collected in a less than ethical manner, even when no laws have been broken. In addition, it’s more than just the data, it’s also the system that holds the data, the application the uses the data, and the users who enter the data that can become problematic. With this in mind, here are some things that you’ll learn when reading this book:

  • Learn methods to prevent illegal access to your system.
  • Discover detection methods when access does occur.
  • Employ machine learning techniques to determine motivations.
  • Mitigate hacker access using a variety of methods.
  • Repair damage to your data and applications.
  • Use ethical data collection methods to reduce security risks.

A major complaint with most books on the market is that there is an expectation that you’re not only an expert coder, but that all you want is to see code. That’s fine if you’re already a seasoned security expert, but then seasoned security experts really don’t need books like this one. Machine Learning Security Principles provides you with several ways to learn about security issues:

  • References to actual security break-ins and the results of them.
  • Block diagrams showing how various kinds of security issues occur.
  • Explanatory text that helps you understand what precisely can happen and how to prevent.
  • Example code that you can use to discover how various security techniques work.
  • Example data and the techniques you can use to work with it.
  • Resources that you can use to augment your security plan.
  • Online tools you can use to more fully explore security issues.

In short, Machine Learning Security Principles provides you with several methods of learning about security in an easy to use manner. It doesn’t take a one size fits all approach. Please let me know if you have any questions about my new book by contacting me at [email protected].

Spaces in Paths

This is an update of the previous post originally created on April 20, 2016.

A number of readers have recently written me about an error they see when attempting to compile or execute an application or script in books such as, C++ All-In-One for Dummies, 4th EditionBeginning Programming with Python For Dummies, 2nd Edition, Python for Data Science for Dummies, and Machine Learning for Dummies, 2nd Edition. Development environments often handle spaces differently because they’re designed to perform tasks such as compiling applications and running scripts. When you see an error message that tells you that a file or path isn’t found, you need to start looking at the path and determine whether it contains any spaces. The best option is to create a directory to hold your source code and to place that directory off the root directory of your drive if at all possible. Keeping the path small and simple is your best way to avoid potential problems compiling code or running scripts.

The problem for many readers is that the error message is buried inside a whole bunch of nonsensical looking text. The output from your compiler or interpreter can contain all sorts of useful debugging information, such as a complete listing of calls that the compiler, interpreter, or application made. However, unless you know how to read this information, which is often arcane at best, it looks like gobbledygook. Simply keep scanning through the output until you see something that humans can read and understand. More often than not, you see an error message that helps you understand what went wrong, such as not being able to find a file or path. Please let me know if you ever have problems making the code examples in my books work, but also be sure to save yourself some time and effort by reading those error messages. Let me know if you have any thoughts or concerns about spaces in directory paths at [email protected].