// Comparison

Hacking et Cyberdéfense vs Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Offensive, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Advanced

4/52026

Auditer son environnement Windows

Jacques Beirnaert-Huvelle, Guillaume Morelle

Two working pentesters who also teach the material walk through the full Active Directory kill chain, offense and defense both, in an expert-level French-language audit manual.

Intermediate

4/52022

Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking

Apprendre l'attaque pour mieux se défendre

ACISSI

The French-language reference for offensive security: a thick, lab-heavy tour of the attacker's toolkit, maintained across editions by the ACISSI collective under the motto “learn the attack to better defend.”

Read this if

French-speaking Windows administrators and security practitioners who already know the basics and want one book covering the whole Active Directory attack lifecycle, enumeration, exploitation, privilege escalation, lateral movement, persistence, and trust-relationship abuse, paired with the Tier-based defenses that actually stop it.

French-speaking students and aspiring pentesters who want one comprehensive offensive-security manual: reconnaissance, network and web attacks, social engineering, forensics and Metasploit, all hands-on. The closest French equivalent to the English pentest canon.

Skip this if

Readers who don't read French, or beginners without prior Windows/AD or pentesting fundamentals; the publisher pitches this explicitly as an expert-level text, not an introduction.

Advanced practitioners who already work in English and live in PortSwigger Academy and current tooling. The breadth means each topic is an introduction rather than a deep dive, and editions lag the fastest-moving tradecraft.

Key takeaways

Has readers build a disposable AD lab (GOAD, NetExec-Lab) so every attack chapter is run hands-on instead of read as theory.
Covers the full AD attack lifecycle end to end, from LDAP/Kerberos fundamentals through post-exploitation and trust-relationship abuse.
Pairs the offense with a dedicated defense chapter on Tier architecture, AGDLP, and risk-prevention policy, making it as much an audit manual as an attack manual.

The single most complete offensive-security book in French — breadth is the selling point, covering recon through forensics in one volume.
Every chapter is exercise-driven; treated as a workbook with a lab VM it teaches well, read passively it teaches little.
Multi-author and re-edited regularly, so quality is uneven chapter to chapter but currency beats most French tech books.

How they compare

Hacking et Cyberdéfense and Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking are both rated 4/5 in our catalog. Pick by topic preference and reading style rather than by rating.

Hacking et Cyberdéfense is pitched at advanced level. Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking is pitched at intermediate level. Read the easier one first if you're not yet comfortable with the topic.

Hacking et Cyberdéfense and Sécurité informatique - Ethical Hacking both cover Offensive, Pentesting, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading

Hacking et Cyberdéfense

→ Alternatives to Hacking et Cyberdéfense → What to read after Hacking et Cyberdéfense