It has become more difficult to precisely define what computer science (CS) really is. This book addresses this challenge by presenting representative concepts from the viewpoint of information security in detail, instead of attempting to provide a brief overview of every relevant topic (such as in Dale and Lewis’s text [1]).

As part of the “Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science (UTiCS)” series, the main audience of this textbook is students (either currently studying subjects related to CS or thinking about enrolling in that area of study) as well as teachers (who might use the book when preparing and developing courses and teaching materials).

The book is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Foundations of Computer Science,” is meant to be read in order. The five chapters contained in this part provide an introduction to fundamental concepts such as number theory, algorithms, and data structures. These are complemented with detailed examples (computer viruses and Google Search) to illustrate how computers actually work by applying these fundamental concepts. Part 2, “Examples from Information Security,” consists of five chapters that can be read in any order. They cover more advanced topics in the area of cryptography and information security, including historical and modern cryptography, why it is important (yet very difficult!) to be able to generate random numbers, steganography, and examples of attacks and countermeasures.

The book can facilitate independent learning. It is relatively short (not quite 250 pages including the introduction, table of contents, and index), yet it covers key concepts necessary for comprehending CS. In particular, the book walks its readers through relevant and reasonably detailed examples, providing relatable ideas that will help them grasp these concepts. The material is accompanied by tasks that readers can carry out or investigate further in order to improve their understanding, as well as supplementary online material (http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/home/page/teaching/wics.html) that provides practical information. Furthermore, snippets of computing history are peppered throughout the book, which makes it interesting to read.

Mathematics is the core building block of this book (and of CS, as a matter of fact). Even though this book does not require its readers to have expert knowledge of mathematics (in fact, it is assumed that potential readers may lack such knowledge at the beginning), the level of mathematics presented might be a bit daunting to some. A complementary book in the same series provides a gentler and easier-to-follow introduction to mathematics for CS [2].

It is interesting to see that all of the references given in this book were taken from Wikipedia entries. The authors provide justification for this, saying that they wanted to make the book as accessible to the intended audience as possible.