Customer Reviews

Check Point Firewall-1 Administration Guide

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I'm a systems consultant and have worked with a number ofdifferent firewall products including FireWall-1. FireWall-1'snetwork address translation feature is very powerful if you manually set up network objects and the local.arp file and configure the NAT rule. This book does even touch on these aspects; the Arch&Admin (that comes with the Firewall-1 CD) explains this in detail in 65 pages. *Copied from the CD documentation: for example, the discussion on SYN Flooding Attack (pages 138-143) is mostly taken WORD-FOR-WORD from Arch&Admin (pages 329-333). Many examples are copied verbatim. *PPTP is not secure relative to alternatives - why recommend it? I thought the authors were veterans. *Checkpoint's OPSEC makes FireWall-1 extensible, and a couple of the add-ons such as RealSecure (attack recognition) and StoneBeat (high availability) are very complementary products. I'd expect professionals who'd write a book on FireWall-1 to have experience in these add-ons. *Of the 450 pages, only the first 306 pages are FireWall-1 related; the next 100 pages (Chapter 13) are on generic Internet attacks - which many books cover more in content and detail. Balance is glossary and index (that's over 10% of the book). *Stripping down NT: the first thing you should do before installing FireWall-1 on NT is strip all the services from the network control panel applet. I guess the authors didn't even bother to copy Joe DiPietro.

This book does not cover anything on FireWall-1 that the software documentation from Checkpoint does not cover. As a matter of fact, Checkpoint's documentation covers much more depth AND breadth than this book. From what I understand, the only documentation on FireWall-1 that is better than Checkpoint's is Checkpoint's Hebrew version of the documentation.

For the price of this book, I'd expect more in-depth coverage on the technical deployment of the product (for the technical implementor), on the strategic deployment of the product (for the CIO), or both. This book provides neither. Stick with the CD's documentation.

I was looking forward to a book about CP FW-1, but was let down with 'Checkpoint Firewall-1 : Administration Guide'.

Goncalve's writing style is a bit choppy and there is not a lot of information in the book that is not easily available elsewhere.

For those who have never touched a firewall, the book may be a good start. But for an average FW-1 admin who has already configured FW-1, it is unlikely the book will add much to their skill set.

The book does not really have anything in it that the Checkpoint documentation hasn't already covered. Between the FW-1 mailing list and the book is not a compelling buy.

For those who really need to know firewalls 'Building Internet Firewalls' by Elizabeth Zwicky <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/15659287176is a much better and cheaper choice. Even though Zwicky's book really does not get into any FW-1 details, it provides a comprehensive overview of how to set up and implement an effective firewall.

But for those that don't have hands-on access to a FW-1 installation, the book is a start.

I've been working with CheckPoint Firewall-1 for about a year now, and while I have only installed a few firewalls, the book does an excellent job of covering what to do. I think the title, an administrator guide, is exactly that, an administrator guide, the authors show completely how to install/setup and configure a rule base, and in a very simple to understand manner. I think it takes someone that has worked with a technology a long time to show how to do it simply. If you've been doing firewalls a long time, no, you don't need the book, the manuals are fine, but I also have CheckPoint documentation, 5 books, 10+ web html docs, and hundreds of simple how-to's from web sites, having most of it in one book does save some carrying. I disagree with some reviewers commments about PPTP, it doesn't show how to setup PPTP on the firewall, just how to pass it through, and yes, PPTP has a large market share, so it is definitely something that needs discussing. All in all, it is a good book, and if some people were disappointed, couldn't they just send the book back.

we have built and maintained our company's firewalls for the past ten years and therefore have a reasonable understanding of how they are configured and what they do.

we were in the position of replacing our existing firewall with one using checkpoint's firewall-1 product. having struggled with the lack of depth in the documentation kit supplied by checkpoint, we purchased goncalves & brown's book in the hope that it would provide a deeper coverage on the more advanced topics of checkpoint's products. alas it was not to be, the book is very much a rehash of the documentation supplied by checkpoint. it added little value and being fairly specific to the firewall-1 product could not be classed as an introductory text to firewalls in general. in particular it's coverage of VPN's is messy and incomplete.

to give an example of the level at which this book appears to be aimed, here is the definition of "audit" taken from the book's glossary (appendix c) - "in network security, examining and evaluating the relative security of a network". gee, i'm glad they cleared that up for me!

in the end, we were saved by "phoneboys" excellent website, which provides vital material that neither this book nor checkpoint's own documentation deem necessary.

the book is now serving a useful (but expensive) role in holding the computer room door open.

avoid this book as you would a midnight outage.

Waste of time for technical people. If you're a manager or exec and need to understand what your IT people are doing, it's allright, but in terms of the actual content, it's pretty sad.

Just to show I'm not whining needlessly:

1.) No information on how FW1 handles routing/routing changes, other than how to block them

2.) Every 2-3 pages there's at least a 1/2 page that's pure marketing stuff; Talks about the benefits of Checkpoint, how it stacks up against the competition, etc. Some of this stuff in neccesary to understand how the app works, but the author went off the handle

3.) Incomplete

The book goes in-depth for UNIX installs, but barely touches NT or HP platforms

Save your money. Log into checkpoint.com and read their whitepapers; you'll get 90% of what's in the book for free.

Goncalves should roast for this embarrassment of a book. FW-1 is tough to learn and has many details to master; unfortunately this won't help you get there. As I read the book I kept thinking to myself, didn't I read this poorly worded passage already in the Checkpoint documentation? It seems as though much of this book was lifted from Checkpoint's sources, munged a little bit through a word processor and then printed out. The book is absolutely full of worthless sales pitches for various features of FW-1. Presumably if you are reading the book, you already have a copy of the software and don't need to read ad copy convincing you to buy it. What you need is a logically arranged and well written treatise on how to set up the software, deal with many of the common problems and pitfalls, and implement some of its many useful features. If you agree that is what you need, then hurry and get your copy of "Essential Check Point Firewall-1" by Welch-Abernathy; don't even consider wasting your money on this dog.

If you've ever worked with FW-1 (any version), or done any kind of firewall work, this isn't the book for you. If you're looking for general firewall information, get Designing Internet Firewalls, published by O'Reilly. This book, while being a very soft and easy introduction to FW-1 by the not-very-FW (or network) saavy individual, is just a re-write of FW-1's documentation, with so much omitted that it's not worth the read. Add a star, though, if you're just starting out, and you have no firewall experience.

This book [is awful]. It's also one of the more expensive books available for Firewall-1. Save your money.(...)

Very, very dissapointing. Doorstop. Birdcage lining.
Indicative of the content was a _screenshot_ of
Checkpoint's site, where "much useful information can be found".

I'm a Network Security Engineer who's been working with Checkpoint for about 3 years, and I ordered this book because I really wanted to master Checkpoint.

The book is embarassing, I could have written a better book. There's little content other than the very basic tasks in Checkpoint, just a rehash of the manuals. It's geared torward the beginner but a beginner would be better off reading "Building Internet Firewalls" published by O'Reilly and "Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker" by Bellovin and Cheswick before reading this garbage.

If you need info on Checkpoint, check out Phone Boy's Checkpoint site or join the Firewall-1 mailing list!