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Title: Computer Security for the Home and Small Office by Thomas C. Greene ISBN: 1-59059-316-2 Publisher: APress Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Very Informative and Helpful
Comment: I am a home user. Greene's book is very instructive and untwists much of the complex structure of computer security. It is well written and witty in places. His detailed modifications to Win XP would have been nice to incorporate but I am a Win 98 user.
Rating: 4
Summary: Lucid and nontechnical
Comment: Greene devotes his attention to those of you who are not full time computer professionals, and who lack a corporate IT staff to do the dirty work for you. He supposes that it is just you, and possibly your family, with your own machines. These days, for your context, he focuses on computers with a Microsoft or linux operating systems. Sadly, he gives little mention to Apple, though this has a devoted but small following.
He does not just discuss strict technical issues about, say, choosing the right secure settings for OpenSSH. If you don't know what that means, don't worry. In fact, it might mean that you could use this book.
Greene also goes into extended discussions of issues with some security aspects, but are not solely that. Like the merits of linux versus Microsoft. An entire chapter is devoted to this crucial topic. In this sense, the book's title is overly narrow. What he offers is a good discussion of topics you need to be aware of with your machine.
And he can certainly write fluently. This is not a hardcore technical book, with arcane commands and intricate procedures. Most of the book is straight prose that flows. There is a relative dearth of figures. Correctly so. The topics are often not tied to specific applications, where you might need diagrams to show how to go from one screen to another.
Which means there is actually another source of readers for this book. If you are well educated, but just not in computing. For whatever reason, you want a lucid, nontechnical explanation of important computer issues faced by many people. So perhaps consider this book?
Rating: 4
Summary: Highly recommended for novices
Comment: Mr. Greene examines multiple areas regarding computer security covering subject areas such as hackers, viruses and worms, adware/spyware, data traces (such as file slack space and data traces), internet privacy, internet anonymity, wireless security and many others. A nice thing about this book is the range of topics covered which allows beginner or novice users to expose themselves to a number of concepts that are completely unfamilliar. The author takes the reader step-by-step through important tasks such as disabling services that put your computer at risk of attack, configuring your computer for SSH tunneling, and using netstat and ethereal to monitor connections being made to your computer. These step-by-step instructions make it easy for naive readers to perform basic security functions that would otherwise be reserved for intermediate and power users. One downside to this book is the reader is often given only the minimum explanation on subjects of interest often leaving more questions in the reader's head than were present before the subject was discussed. This is likely due to page constraints inherent in covering such a broad topic and basically puts it in the reader's hands to seek out more information.
The author focuses on hardening Microsoft Windows XP since this is by far the most common operating system on PCs (not to mention it is in dire need of securing due to the way in which it is made and distributed). Despite the emphasis on Windows XP the author covers Linux systems as well since it is gaining popularity and appears to be his personal preference. The author doesn't hide his frustrations with Microsoft and takes every opportunity to explain ways in which Linux is superior. The appendices are quite useful as they contain summaries on important configurations discussed in the book, a glossary of technical terms, a list of commonly used and exploited ports, and a list of helpful online resources.
The recommendation of this book is for beginner to intermediate level users. Being as naïve as I was it was a safe bet that this book would be completely novel to me but depending on how one defines 'intermediate user' this book may contain many things an intermediate user is already familiar with. This book is written clearly enough such that no one should fear it being too difficult to understand. To give you an idea of where my knowledge base was when I ordered the book, I knew that firewalls somehow 'hide' your computer on the internet and I knew an IP address is how your computer is identified over the internet. That's about it! By no stretch of my imagination do I classify myself as anything more than an 'informed beginner' but I'm now aware of many of the risks involved with network computing and I feel I have enough knowledge to manage some of those risks and research them on my own. I highly recommend this book for people who, like me, feel that computer literacy is too overwhelming of a subject to even begin to understand and have often relied on network administrators or that 'friend of a friend who knows some stuff about computers' to help you understand how your computer works. This book is by no means the definitive authority on understanding computer networks and computer security but you can be certain it will be less mysterious of a subject after you've read it. I don't give it the full 5 stars because I felt some subjects (in particular netstat) were far too brief and could have been explained in more detail.
(By the way, Amazon.com installs adware on your computer.)
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Title: Hardening Windows (Expert's Voice) by Jonathan Hassell ISBN: 1590592662 Publisher: APress Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: Always Use Protection: A Teen's Guide to Safe Computing by Dan Appleman ISBN: 159059326X Publisher: Apress Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $17.99 |
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Title: Security Warrior by Cyrus Peikari, Anton Chuvakin ISBN: 0596005458 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
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Title: Ethereal Packet Sniffing by Angela D. Orebaugh, Gilbert Ramirez ISBN: 1932266828 Publisher: Syngress Publishing Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: Degunking Windows by Joli Ballew, Jeff Duntemann ISBN: 1932111840 Publisher: Paraglyph Publishing Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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