The year 2015 has passed and 2016 has begun. With the precision of a clockwork, the year changes. And with it comes the publication of the latest volume of our book series. scip Labs 7 is available in both German and English and can be purchased online. In this article, we want to give you a unique look behind the scenes of our book and the research it’s based on.

Our company has been in business for 13 years now and reserach is important since the beginning. 7 years ago, we’ve started to publish professional articles at least once a week on our company blog. The best of these articles are being collected into our annual book.

Often, we’re being asked why we make the effort to publish a book annually. After all, writing books is not exactly our core business. We have to disagree with that. The exchange between experts is vital for the on-going success of our business. Our employees are motivated to tackle and question the latest developments. This motivation often leads to them inventing new developments or their implementation. It is the only way for us to be among the best in our area of expertise.

Since the inception of scip AG, research has been a very important part of our success in a time of hackers, exploits and malware. That’s why we have established our own research department. This department provides us with developments we can use in our work: They write tools, optimize exploits and explore Malware. But we also conduct research given to us by our clients. Among them are prognoses regarding drones or a study detailing data trafficking on the Darknet. Excerpts from these studies are also published on our blog, but we also present them to clients as well as the media.

One of our basic thoughts when approaching research is that there should be a tangible result. Our specialists have, over the years, accumulated a big list of professional articles and presentations. During research, we tackle both timeless basic research as well as current observations. We aim to be both sustainable and current.

During regularly occurring editorial meetings, we discuss the immediate or apparent research tasks and assign experts to them. We try to respect the prior knowledge and preferences of our analysts. By forming teams, seasoned analysts can pass their knowledge on to less experienced members of the company. And by using an interdisciplinary method to research, we can try exciting new approaches.

Our professional articles are being published in German and English. The international nature of our clientele leads to both languages being very popular among readers. It’s interesting to see that some topics and articles find more interest in English. Conversely, there are topics that German readers are much more interested in than English ones. Our employees are free to write their texts in either language as their texts are being translated to the other language.

After editing (corrections and layout) the book goes off to the printer’s. All our books to date have been printed locally in Switzerland in order to have not only maximum flexibility but also high quality. Typically, there’s a month between finalizing the book and holding the first printed volume in our hands.

Initially, we wanted the book to be a Christmas present for our most loyal clients. We wanted to replace the traditional and perishable gifts of wine or cake with something that has staying power and that sticks in a person’s memory. The demand for our book has steadily grown and has reached heights that we have had to get more books printed and began to offer some of these books for sale. The books can be obtained using our website. We wish you a lot of fun while reading!

About the Author

Marc Ruef has been working in information security since the late 1990s. He is well-known for his many publications and books. The last one called The Art of Penetration Testing is discussing security testing in detail. He is a lecturer at several faculties, like ETH, HWZ, HSLU and IKF. (ORCID 0000-0002-1328-6357)