When you want to move a lot of information to a human endpoint, it’s hard to beat the bandwidth of a book. Used in everything from recreation to university education, a full bookshelf (whether paper or digital) is part of the requirement for any well-prepared professional.

Dark Reading asked users on social media which books they would recommend for professionals looking to increase their level of knowledge and understanding.

The books recommended go across the spectrum from novels that teach new methods to books the explore broad social issues to hands-on books for developers. In every case, though, the book listed teaches something important about security and its application in the enterprise.

Are there books that have been an important part of your security education? If so, we’d like to know. Share those critical books with us in the comments — you’ll be helping your peers build a better bookshelf for their security libraries.

The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet by David Kahn is available on Amazon.

A system engineer at a major security company recommended a pair of books. The first is the Red Team Field Manual, by Ben Clark.

If you have an exercise with a red team, you’ll also need a blue team, and the Blue Team Field Manual is the book for them. This practical manual, by authors Alan J. White and Ben Clark, is a concise way to quickly give critical knowledge to those charged with defending an organization’s network and assets.

The same Twitter-using engineer who recommended The Codebreakers also recommended The Code Book, saying, “Much lighter to read [than The Code Breakers] and good for building up a security mindset foundation.”

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