SANS GIAC Certification: Security Essentials Toolkit (GSEC) (Spiral-bound)

~ (Author), Mathew Newfield (Author), John M. Millican (Author), Stephen Northcutt (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The best way to develop a working knowledge of anything is to actually work with it--see it work, see it fail, and see what happens when variables are adjusted. Under the guise of an exam-preparation aid, SANS GIAC Certification: Security Essentials Toolkit guides its readers through a series of carefully designed experiments that collectively illustrate how attackers go about breaking into (or just plain breaking) their targets. The authors assume little background knowledge on the reader's part and take care to show you what you need to do in order to see the effects they're trying to demonstrate. This is, above all, a laboratory manual, and the authors deserve kudos for their effort to ensure that you can reproduce their results. A highly graphical design and wide, lay-flat binding make this book all the more useful as a hands-on companion.

The authors' dedication to standardization is evident from the first exercise (this book consists almost entirely of exercises), in which they show how to build a dual-boot system with both Linux and Windows 2000 installed. The idea is that you can build this system once, make an image of it, and then be able to repeatedly break and rebuild your system without wasting time. Subsequent exercises deal with different types of attacks and the defenses that are effective against each. Each exercise has an explicitly illustrated procedure--usually illustrating a successful attack and a failed one (i.e., one that was defended against). You learn not only to install defensive software and trust it, but also to recognize evidence of attacks in log files and in behavioral symptoms. More security books--and technical books in general--should be like this one. --David Wall

Topics covered: The kinds of attacks--against Windows 2000 and Linux systems--that are covered on the SANS Institute's Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) exam, as well as the software tools and configuration strategies that you can use to protect your systems against them. The authors cover many attacks--including Trojans, host spoofs, and others--and many defensive weapons (like firewalls and intrusion detection systems).

Product Description

Master the tools of the network security trade with the official book from SANS Press! You need more than a hammer to build a house, and you need more than one tool to secure your network. Security Essentials Toolkit covers the critical tools that you need to secure your site, showing you why, when, and how to use them. Based on the SANS Institute's renowned Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) program, this book takes a workbook-style approach that gives you hands-on experience and teaches you how to install, configure, and run the best security tools of the trade.

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Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 384 pages
• Publisher: Que; 1st edition (March 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789727749
• ISBN-13: 978-0789727749
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 8.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #102,490 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars good book, but not always accurate, April 20, 2003

By	"seabassi52" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

If you don't have any security background then this book is a good place to start. Be ready, however, for most of the links to be out of date (the book was published in 2002). This can be circumvented by a little help from Google to find the utilities you need for the exercises. There are also a few inaccuracies in the syntax provided. These can be resolved with help from "man" (i.e. 'man ipchains') or the help for the particular utility.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Knowledge is Power - Definitive skills in the security arena, May 21, 2002

By	Richard H Harvey (London, UK) - See all my reviews

What do you say when you're given the answers to all those questions you've been trying to answer for so long....?

The Security Essentials Handbook may be the first definitive guide that allows that feeling to be realised.

Where most security books cover concepts or ideas (tools or hacks), this one finally breaks the barrier between the text and hands on experience. Written as an addition to the SANS Security Essentials course and GSEC certification, it allows the reader to learn, experience and understand the logic, tools and methods involved in IT security from both sides of the fence - thus creating a better security professional.

Covering points of view from Windows, Linux and Unix camps it gives a thorough grounding to the most commonly used tools in todays security defense and breaches. Taking the reader through a concise and methodical approach it teaches and explains the theory, configuration and use of each tool, how to use it to find vunerabilities in your network and defend your network from it's use. It then goes further to explain the use of firewalls, security policies, network security and design, secure comunication (encryption) and a breakdown of both Windows and Unix system security with the aim of creating a Hardened (secure) system.

Written by Eric Cole, Matthew Newfield and John M. Millican, all long time security experts and either certified with or involved in the creation of the certification/courses that SANS offer you could have no better guides through the journey this book takes you on. A thing not to miss is the fact that it's SANS certified which adds credit to it's release, invaluable for the hands on skills needed to aim for the GSEC certification.

As a network/security professional I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the what's & hows of network/IT security. I'd recommend it just as much to any security team or professional as an "on the desk" reference for every day use. An invaluable tool, reference and teacher for those willing to delve deep and take the time to read (and play....).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent hands-on coverage, June 7, 2002

By	Robert Hohman (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This is *the* authoritative text for those who are new to security or wish to enhance their existing security knowledge. The hands-on, exercise driven approach is extremely effective at teaching the material. I have seen John Millican speak at SANS and have always been impressed with his ability to dive deep into security issues while explaining it simply and elegantly. This book is particularly helpful because of the broad range of tools it covers, and the multi-OS perspective that it takes on the matter.

A must-have for those who are serious about learning security.