Customer Reviews

Solaris Security

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

 

 

I'm a junior sysadmin, and really enjoyed this book for the great overview it gave of security issues, especially Solaris. It covers a very wide breadth of topics, and gives you perhaps 80% of what you would need on a normal basis. Sure, it's not super in-depth 100% on every subject, but it gives many references for further reading. This would not be a book for the expert Solaris security admin, but it gives me exactly what I need. It's a real time-saver because of its breadth, and its very easy and quick to read and understand, it includes copies of what you'd see in log files, and walks you thru the exact commands and output you'd see on the command line, and it includes diagrams/tables for summaries/descriptions for various commands/programs/services, and the recommendations in dis/enabling them.

It covers PROM commands, file permissions, account security, x-windows, auditing tools, cron/at, system logs/syslog, IP, routing, snoop, sendmail, printing, DNS, NFS,NIS+, disaster recovery, security checklist, network access control, overview of 3rd party tools, PGP/MD5 verification of downloaded tools, and 50 pages of appendices.

I found this to be an excellent starting-point for exploring security issues.

By the way, the previous reviewer Nikolai N Bezroukov who gave it one star may be misleading about one point. He wrote:

--- begin quote ---

The quality of the book can be illustrated by the folowing quote (preface, page XLI):

ftp://ftp.win.tne.nl/pub/security/tcp_wrappers_7.6tar.gz

--- end quote ---

The author was using that as a lesson about how URLs in books and on the Web become outdated and obsolete, and he gave tips about them and also suggested readers check the appendices in the back of the book for additional security sites.

The Solaris Security book is very well laid out, easy to read, and has information every Solaris admin and security admin needs to know. I've been working with many different versions of Unix and even though I'm not new to Solaris, I found this book helpful by being able to find the reference or background knowledge quickly. If you're lucky enough to work with only Solaris 100% of the time then maybe this book won't knock your socks off - but I'd still recommend it as a reference book and to pass around to your co-workers. Having the references to other sources makes it feel more realistic by getting other points of view and for other priorities (such as having a checklist, more in-depth on networking, etc). I give it 5 stars for the best Solaris Security book in print.

I have been securing solaris servers for a couple years now, and I wish I had this book when I first got started. The general UNIX security books are just not enough. Each UNIX OS has their own configuration procedures for tightening security. Any print book cannot keep up with Internet time, but for those who need a jumpstart to securing their Solaris server, this is a great start. A good security program requires further research. There are many good solaris security sites on the internet.

I thought this was a great book, I wish I had read this bookbefore I got my Sun Certified Systems Administration certificationbecause it really compliments the outline for quite a few of the topics on the exams, this book is easy to read with great "walk-throughs" and countermeasures of things to look for and things to be aware of. It really cleared up a lot of concepts for me that I was unclear on. If you were a total UNIX guru then this might be stuff you already know but if you have a workstation or something like that and you want to lock it down,this book really helps you understand and walks you through things to do for tighter security on your machine

And so is Book News's Review. They write above "Physical security, bootpaths, permissions, auditing tools, system logs, and passwords are among the topics."

AUDITING TOOLS? A whole two pages describing what auditing is. If you are looking for a book with any information on auditing, don't buy this.

This book is a decent intro to security on a Solaris system. If you are a new Solaris admin, this book is a great read. It does cover a lot of topics from a high level, so it is lacking on a lot of practicals. It will give you a decent idea of where you to go. A good starting point, but you need to get into some other security books to get the nitty gritty details.

Give this to all your junior sysadmins and get them to read it. It's amazing how many places and admins don't even make an attempt to secure their machines. I can only assume they don't know how or don't care. If they want a good start, this is it!

If you have 2 years Unix experience you already know the contents. Doesn't have have tricks&hints. It gives good reference to look forward on the web or other books. Save your money ...

They should have named this book "Beginning Solaris Administration with a touch of Security". This book presents basic system administration techniques, many of them extremely obvious or simple common sense. Security is glossed over very quickly with little to no 'meat'. "We recommend running COPS or Tiger to audit this weakness, see Chapter 4." Chapter 4 includes a one paragraph note on COPS.

In addition to the lack of any real content, like all recent computer books, author continually comments on blocking port 43 at the firewall to prevent DNS queries and zone transfers. Everyone knows that DNS uses port 53--in fact, the author notes that in a table 10 pages earlier. I would just attribute this to a typo, but he mentions port 43 at least 5 times on one page.

I expected better of SUN and Prentice-Hall, but I guess I should have known better based on the Janice Winsor books. [This review refers to the 1st printing]

This book gives only a bird's view of Solaris security - with many important concepts missing and much unnecessary information which most UNIX administrators know. On the same time it is outdated (published in 1999), and it does not cover many new features in Solaris 8, the current release of Solaris.