Our societies can’t cope without computers. Every time they go down, so do we. We’ve become profoundly digitally dependent. But the foundations of our digital world are wildly insecure. They are built on sand.

These deep-rooted security weaknesses allow some of the worst people in our online world to take us for a dangerous ride. Every day, millions of people are scammed out of their money. Billions of pieces of sensitive data go missing. Worse, hospital appointments get cancelled because healthcare systems are overpowered by hackers. Other critical services fail. Few trust the information they’re receiving online, and many more fall for information manipulation. And most worryingly of all, some of the most powerful and malevolent regimes on the planet are planting digital bombs all over our networks, so they can grind our lives to a halt in the event of a serious global crisis.

The Bugs in the book are the viruses sweeping through our digital bloodstream. The Thugs are the rapacious global criminals living the high life funded by ransom payments in cryptocurrency. The Spies are the hostile countries stealing our sensitive information and booby-trapping our critical services. The Lies are the consistent campaigns of online disinformation, increasingly powered by AI, designed to drain away the crucial trust that holds societies together.

This Achilles’ heel of modern life demands a response before it’s too late. Every individual and organisation needs to know what to do to survive the onslaught of cyber attacks. But we have to fix the fundamental problems of cyber security too. This book sets out how we can, and why we must.

© Ciaran Martin 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027