The Practice of Network Security: Deployment Strategies for Production Environments Review

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(More customer reviews)I work at a Wireless ISP, and have recently taken over a position that requires me to be familar with how to secure our ISP's wired network. I bought this book as a guide to help me understand all the different devices and software packages that I needed to focus on.
The biggest strength of this book, in my opinion, is the real world networking information and the clear manner in which Liska describes what security risks there are for most network environments and how to make those environments more secure.
For example, a lot of network books talk about RIP (Routing Information Protocol - basically a protocol that allows your router to choose the best path to tramsit data) and most of them recommend enabling it in order to have a redundant network. In my experience, none of the books that I've read, except this one, have mentioned that there are fairly big security risks associated with using RIP. This book describes the nature of the security risks as well as the most likely way someone might exploit them, and then offers suggestions on how to either duplicate RIP's functionality in a more secure way or how to make sure RIP is as secure as it can get.
Another part of the book that was quite helpful to me was the section on VPN's, something I have no experience with. Liska runs through the different types of VPN's, what the effects are of using VPN's, how to make sure your VPN stays secure, and as he does throughout the book, impresses upon you the importance of good passwords.
This is just a small example of two of the many things I learned even on a quick flip through the book. I like this book a great deal because it's crammed full of interesting information that actually applies to my production network that I did not know or even know I had to know. Liska even covers Wireless Networks! As a WISP employee, I can attest to the accuracy of this information, and I would love to see him write more on the subject!
In short, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for an informative and clearly written book covering the most pertinent information on all parts of the network, from Human Beings to Switches to Firewalls. I look forward to Allan Liska's next book.

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In The Practice of Network Security, former UUNet networkarchitect Allan Liska shows how to secure enterprise networks in thereal world - where you're constantly under attack and you don't alwaysget the support you need. Liska addresses every facet of networksecurity, including defining security models, access control,Web/DNS/email security, remote access and VPNs, wireless LAN/WANsecurity, monitoring, logging, attack response, and more. Includes adetailed case study onredesigning an insecure enterprise network formaximum security.

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