Beyond Fear - Definition and Overview

This article is about Beyond Fear, the book. For the 1997 telemovie, see "Beyond Fear (telemovie)".

Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World is a non-fiction book by Bruce Schneier, published in 2003. The book grew out of an Atlantic Monthly article by Charles Mann. Beyond Fear presents a five-step process for evaluating the value of a countermeasure against security attacks. In chapter one on page seven, Schneier describes the subject of Beyond Fear in two sentences.

This book is about security: how it works and how to think about it. It's not about whether a particular security measure works, but about how to analyze and evaluate security measures.

Chapter one of Beyond Fear introduces the idea that all security involves "trade-offs".