Internet Security: Professional Reference

This complete reference shows how Internet and network security is implemented and details ways to keep it from being violated. Inadequacies in current security products and set-ups are pointed out and strategies to overcome them are detailed step by step.

Internet Security covers far more material than most other books on the subject, but--inevitably--in less depth. You'll find chapters on daemons, Unix-to-Unix copy (UUCP), audit trails, spoofing and sniffing, SATAN, Kerberos, encryption and PGP, Java, CGI, and viruses. Encompassing such a broad range of material in detail is risky, and this book suffers from several gaps. For example, the subject of electronic commerce goes untouched, with no mention of payment-specific schemes such as CyberCash or protocols such as Secure Electronic Transaction (SET). For those topics that are included, the level of depth varies considerably: Some topics are covered by well-written overviews, others by listing the programs' parameters in excruciating detail, and still others by simplistic tutorials that seem out of place in a technical volume. In addition, there are topics such as encryption, which are scattered across many sections.

You'll also find the full text of RFC 1244, a publicly available document known as the Site Security Handbook. (The only extra value in including it here is that you get it in printed form.) Similarly, the section on building firewalls contains the full manual for the TIS toolkit, a public domain firewall utility that is included (along with its manual) on the bundled CD-ROM.