Mathematics for cybersecurity professionals: learning strategies and maintaining your sharpness

[j_M007]

Hello all,

I wonder if any of you, either in your pursuit of the CISSP or other (ISC)2 credentials,  compiled a list of resources to assist those of us who are following you in the understanding or memorization of cybersecurity mathematics and other concepts of cybersecurity numbers.

I can think of numbers in BIA, and other risk algorithms (ALE, SLE, Total Risk, etc.) and in internetwork addressing schemes (bytes, packets, octets and so forth), also in cryptography (modular math, understanding ECC) and in 3DES, SHA-1, SHA-2, Keccak, etc.) I suppose there are numbers for budgeting, cost/benefit analyses, etc.

It would be great not to have reinvent any wheels and TO work from a readily available source (any wikis on this out there?)

That's my concern right now; knowing how to have the numbers on hand when the inevitable number-crunching questions arise.

Thanks all, and best regards as always.

[Early_Adopter]

What I will say if you are studying math for Crypto Implementation and you are not a cryptologist, a cryptography programmer or  Whitfield Diffie then you are probably doing it wrong. 😉

If however, you are studying to pick it up or for fun or to break into it then this is awesome:

https://www.schneier.com/books/applied_cryptography/

If you are a cryptologist or Whitfield Diffie the secret's hidden within your luxurious beard* encompass this and more.

*It can be a metaphorical beard as well, not all cryptology practitioners have them.

[Ikmguy]

In some ways, learning math to improve your cybersecurity employability is like learning the Caesar Cypher to send a private message--oops, too late. Just download the OpenSSH package or click on the "Encrypt Document" button on your word processor (unless, as was just posted, you are that cryptologist). But there are many other aspects of math in the field of cybersecurity. College algebra, statistics, and most of discrete math (including game theory) has direct applications to the study of cybersecurity. Whether calculating risk (probability/statistics and logarithms) , analyzing network traffic (more statistics and discrete math) or simply trying to wrap one's head around who needs what keys and why (symbolic logic), maths skill--or maybe, a math mindset, is important for success in almost any area within cybersecurity. It also helps to have the mind of a game strategist combined with a military general to really get into the excitement of that adversarial thinking--a key element of success.

[j_M007]

1. I am looking for a list of the basic equations to know for the test
2. I use basic ALE, SLE, BIA, etc metrics.
3. Does a list exist?
4. Is there a discussion of day-to-day mathematics topics.

Cheers.