Customer Reviews

Dr Tom Shinder's ISA Server and Beyond: Real World Security Solutions for Microsoft Enterprise Networks

5 star:		(5)
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3 star:		(1)
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This book rocks. As a user of ISA server (two of them) in a production environment I heavily relied on ISAServer.org, White papers and Toms first guide out for ISA to set up my solution properly. It took me about 1 year of research and effort to really understand this product and its infinite abilities as a proxy and a firewall and now that I understand its little quirks, I wanted to expand past this knowledge into another realm of understanding. I picked up ISA and beyond to round off my knowledge and it did just that. This book was truly written with the reader and their goals in mind. Dr Tom and crew strikes again making this really cool product FINALLY easy to learn and manipulate.

I bought this book after I saw Tom Shinder speak at a conference. I really enjoyed his presentation, mostly because he just explained compicated things in plain English and also because he was really willing to stick around after his talk and help people (including me!). I figured that his book would have the same kind of style, and I'm not at all disappointed. He covers everything you could possible want to know about ISA Server, and MS Security in general. I learned more about IIS security in the one chapter in this book than I have reading entire books on IIS. That's why this book is so good because you get the absolute maximum amount of content possible out of every chapter. It's all based on real experience and there is no fluff. You just can't go wrong with this book.

I read Shinder's first ISA book, and I'm pretty sure that I could not have survived without it. Anyone working with ISA knows how difficult it is, and you really do need a good book to use. Once I finally got things up and running there were tons of other things I wanted to start doing w/ ISA mostly with DMZs and web publishing. This book has helped me get to the next level just like the first book helped me to get started. Shinder really has a talent for communicating very complex stuff in a very easy to understand way.

I'm just simply amazed by this book and Tom Shinder. I bought after I saw it recommended on the Microsoft site where Shinder seems to be the ISA guy. There is absolutely nothing better, nothing that even comes close even, out there. Shinder knows his stuff. The coverage of EFS, IPSec, and IIS is excellent and I learned some about DMZs too. I dare say there is not a chapter in the book that you wouldn't want to digest completely.

This is an indepth look at some of what ISA can do. It has considerable coverage of DMZs, Server publising, OWA and Security policies including VPNs and certificates. A must have for any IT Professional either working with ISA or considering an ISA server.

This book seems to be written in the form of how the author would configure an ISA Server. I personaly purchase IT based books strictly as reference manauls for my career, and this book leans more towards a "senarios" slant.