Customer Reviews

Firewalls Complete (Complete Series)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For a book called 'Firewalls Complete', it spent a rather small percentage of its considerable bulk on firewalls. To be fair, I have to admit that I'm not counting the very large section reviewing firewall products. I'm not interested in procuring a firewall, just in knowing what they are and how they work. For a sysadmin evaluating firewalls, I imagine it's very useful. Much more time was spent (in several sections) on security policy. Important, no doubt, but not why I bought the book. Very vague on topics like SOCKS and http tunneling. After reading this, I still don't have a solid understanding of common firewall configurations and best practices, nor of the relationships between the technologies involved.

Overall speaking Firewalls Complete is the most complete book I ever read. The author provides a lot of information you can possibly find in a single book. Firewall concepts, encryption, and an outline of a list of firewalls are included. The CD itself is worth the price, as it brings several demos and few evaluation copies of the main firewalls available on the market.

I don't think the author had ever reread what he's written. The book doesn't respect any logic in presenting things, some of which are covered with a lot of technical details, the others - just mentioned by the way (God knows why). The text is repetitive, difficult to read (ok, English is my 3rd language), and the diagrams sometimes conflict with the explanations, which only contributes to the general mess. Save your money for something more clear.

This is the only book I know covering the 15+ main firewall products available on the market. The CD brings many demos and evaluations of these firewalls, which helped me a lot on narrowing down my choices. Very complete!

The author bounces around various topics - some written very basic and some sections assume a great deal of knowledge. There is little consistency in the audience. Also, many of the firewall demos are out of date and do not install correctly. (I also would not call two .pdf files from a vendor a demo) All in all, keep your money.

This book is extremely useful as a reference for Firewalls in general and contains much information about encryption standards. It is however difficult to read and inconsistent. Some of the topics are extremely hard to follow and I have had to purchase additional material to fully understand the subject area. It is however recommended for those looking for in-depth explanations on the details of Firewalling in general.

This book is truly a partner if you're involved with strategical security planning. It provides information about the need for Internet security, why IP protocols are unsafe, the role of encryption technologies and an outline of the main firewall products available on the market, including demos and evaluations in the CD that comes with it.

The product reviews alone are worth the price. Saved alot of eval time. Also, I was able to use this book to train new admins as the book answered alot of their questions for me, again saving me time. There seems to be a good balance between intro and detail. Those who need a network policy will find a good template included. Just fill in the blanks. You need to put some thought into it, but the auther has outlined the way for you. The author has sporadically placed helpful details through the book that are technically valuable, such as Claunch's patch for the TIS toolkit. Another techtip section is the small section on testing your FW setup. This was a good section to pass on to intro admins who are still learning that testing saves them. One recommendation I might make is that the author place info like this in an easy lookup appendex for future reference. A valuable book, worth the price.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of firewalls and security schemes as well as a good overview of the main firewall products available.

The book is ideal for those in the process of evaluating firewall products. Chapter 14 alone, which reviews more than 15 firewall products provides you with a rundown of the main products, its features and limitations. The many demos and evaluation copies of various firewalls enables you to test them out before deciding on anyone. There are some very good whitepapers included there and a great multimedia presentation of FireWall-1, from Check Point.