Customer Reviews

Cisco Secure Internet Security Solutions (Cisco Press Core Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is without a doubt, the biggest waste of time of any Cisco Press book I ever purchased. I was VERY excited about the coverage this book promised for poorly documented topics such as Cisco Secure Policy Manager.

What a bitter disappointment. This book is as wide as the horizon and as deep as a backyard puddle.

I wish I could give this title a negative number, but I'm forced to be polite and post a "1".

I can't believe any self-respecting CCIE would attach his/her name to such a fluffy, insubstantial work of garbage.

Save your money and buy one of the specific security titles:...

This book contains information of Cisco security family products. To me, they are quite general and not in-depth. If you want to master the products, you'd better look for other resources on the Internet.

This book goes hand-in-hand with the MCNS coursebook. Where the MCNS book is Wordy, this book gets right to the point and tells you how to use Cisco Secure Policy Manager and Cisco Firewalls. However, This isn't the book for you if you need to have everything explained to you in great detail. MCNS is the book for that.

This book is well written and keeps your interest. (Something that is hard to come by in the networking field of books.)

Kudo's to Andrew Mason, and Mark Newcomb for an excellent book.

This book has been great in helping me get to grips with both general network security, and the capabilities of Cisco security devices. It covers the basics of loads of topics, and also covers how to implement solutions to specific problems. It's great as a reference, but I just wish I had the time to read it cover to cover!

.... What the authors should have done here is provide the network diagram for the SAFE lab and discuss each command appropriately. For example, NTP is discussed in their book from a conceptual manner where as the SAFE document use NTP extensively. Cisco did not either produce a network diagram with the IP addresses used with the SAFE architecture. The PIX coverage is fair except on the CA (too short). The ACS coverage fails to mention that to be able to get access to the Authorization,that the EXEC command need to be specified so you can access the Exec command when redirected to AAA CSNT. Key&Lock security example is incomplete because it fails to mention that the return traffic need to be established access-l 101 permit tcp any any established log and also that you should make sure that you also allowing your routing updates to go through if you use filter inbound.

However, this book is enjoyable to read and give some insights on Cisco security in general.

I can hardly believe that this book was written by CCIEs as it contains a lot of errors. What do you think about "service ROUTER-encryption" command, phrases like "unless you are purposely using SNMP version 1, the "snmp-server community" command must be avoided at all costs (because it enables SNMP ver 1 instead of ver 2)" and so on. A lot of the text was directly borrowed from cisco IOS configuration guides without any modification. And believe me, extended numbered access lists can be edited as well as named ACLs!

I am involved in the daily design and configuration of Internet Security Solutions for a UK based ISP. This book provides an excellent overview of Internet security principles and then makes product selection and configuration very easy. I could have done with this book months ago!