Understand the Cyber Attacker Mindset: Build a Strategic Security Programme to Counteract Threats

By Sarah Armstrong-Smith

Strengthen your cybersecurity strategy by thinking like an attacker and anticipating threats before they strike.

Understand the Cyber Attacker Mindset by leading cybersecurity expert and best-selling author Sarah Armstrong-Smith is a strategic guide for leaders who need to understand the people, motives and methods behind modern cyber attacks.

This fully revised second edition helps leaders navigate a threat landscape reshaped by AI, organized crime, cyber-enabled fraud and transnational attack models. New chapters explore AI-accelerated threats, sextortion, human trafficking and the criminal ecosystems that sustain cybercrime - revealing how attackers adapt, collaborate and profit.

Drawing on real-world examples including SolarWinds, Scattered Spider, North Korean IT worker schemes and South-East Asian fraud compounds, this book connects the headlines to the human, operational and economic forces behind them. The result is a practical and strategic lens for understanding the human drivers of attacker behaviour, reducing exposure and strengthening organizational resilience.

You will learn how to:
- Think like an attacker and analyse their behaviour
- Recognise the warning signs of fast-moving threat models
- Anticipate AI-driven attacks and evolving cybercrime tactics
- Address advanced human risk at leadership level
- Strengthen executive crisis readiness
- Build security cultures grounded in trust, accountability and psychological safety

For CISOs, CIOs, CTOs and business leaders across cybersecurity, resilience, fraud, risk and crisis management, this book offers a clear, compelling and human-centred approach to making better security decisions, strengthening resilience and defending against increasingly sophisticated threats.

Themes include: cybersecurity strategy, attacker mindset, cyber threat intelligence, AI in cybersecurity, insider threat management, cyber risk governance, social engineering, psychological and cognitive warfare.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1398630209
• ISBN13: 9781398630208
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Length: 304 Pages