PEARSON EDUCATION Cyber Defense for the Hybrid Enterprise in the Age of AI: Zero Trust and the Anatomy of Cyber Breaches

Cyber Defense for the Hybrid Enterprise in the Age of AI explores how digital fraud, ransomware, malicious devices, and AI-driven cyber threats evolved into a modern cyber battlefield where attackers increasingly abuse automation, stealth, identity manipulation, and legitimate enterprise protocols to bypass traditional security defenses. Built from real-world enterprise incidents, Cisco security research, and operational experience across hybrid infrastructures, this book delivers a practical guide for understanding, detecting, and defending against modern cyberattacks using vendor-agnostic methodologies such as Zero Trust, NIST SP 800-207, NIST SP 800-30, CISA Zero Trust principles, Cyber Kill Chain, MITRE ATT&CK, and Cisco SAFE aligned with world-class security architectures. Developed from a collaboration between Cisco and a global enterprise impacted by repeated digital fraud incidents, this book introduces the concept of the “digital battlefield” through different generations of real-world attacks observed in production environments. It also presents three attack models developed in Cisco labs: L.U.M.A. (Layer 2 Undetected Mobile Access), LTR-SMB (Little Red SMB Attack), and LTR-Inject (Little Red Wireless Inject Attack). These attack models demonstrate how adversaries can exploit Layer 2 communication, trusted enterprise protocols, wireless infrastructures, mobile networks, and identity spoofing techniques to evade traditional security controls and expand laterally across enterprise environments. One of the most unique aspects of this book is that readers experience the battlefield from both perspectives: the attacker’s side and the defender’s side. Through adversary emulation exercises, penetration testing simulations, and real-world attack scenarios, readers gain a practical understanding of how modern attacks evolve across the complete attack lifecycle, including reconnaissance, lateral movement, persistence, ransomware propagation, malicious device infiltration, credential abuse, and data exfiltration. At the same time, this book demonstrates how defenders can detect and contain these threats using behavioral analytics, Zero Trust principles, and technologies such as Cisco ISE, TrustSec, MACsec, Secure Firewall, Secure Network Analytics, and Splunk integrated into adaptive security architectures. Through practical deployment guidance, real-world case studies, lab simulations, and adversary emulation scenarios, security professionals will gain actionable strategies to implement continuous verification, behavioral analytics, automated threat containment, microsegmentation, macrosegmentation, and identity-aware security controls across enterprise and hybrid environments. More than a theoretical cybersecurity book, Cyber Defense for the Hybrid Enterprise in the Age of AI serves as a field-tested operational playbook for architects, engineers, SOC analysts, penetration testers, and security leaders responsible for protecting modern infrastructures against the next generation cyber threats. Key Features Explains different generations of digital fraud, ransomware, and malicious device attacks Introduces the L.U.M.A., LTR-SMB, and LTR-Inject attack models developed in Cisco labs Applies vendor-agnostic methodologies including Zero Trust, NIST SP 800-207, NIST SP 800-30, CISA, Cyber Kill Chain, MITRE ATT&CK, and SAFE Demonstrates both attacker and defender perspectives during real-world attack simulations Covers ransomware, MITM attacks, malicious devices, wireless attacks, AI-driven threats, and east-west lateral movement Includes penetration testing scenarios, adversary emulation exercises, and real-world enterprise case studies Demonstrates practical implementation strategies for behavioral analytics, microsegmentation, and Zero Trust architectures Presents actionable techniques to reduce operational, financial, and reputational risk Shows how to integrate Cisco ISE, TrustSec, MACsec, Secure Firewall, Secure Network Analytics, Splunk, and other security technologies into modern enterprise environments