Active Directory For Dummies Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Doing Active Directory right was important to my small technology company, so I bought more than ten books on Active Directory, Windows 2000 Server, and DNS. This Dummies book I took home and planned to skim through it first, thinking it would be a nice quick introduction.
The book got mislaid, and I did not pick it up again until I was nicely up to speed with Active Directory and had done several installations. I read it anyway on a Saturday night as a quick review and was surprised at the clear style, nice organization, and adequacy of its coverage of the subject matter.
If you have just a day or two to get up to speed with this important new Microsoft technology, this book will certainly do. System administrators and architects will want a more technical treatment.

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SOA Security Review

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(More customer reviews)Great book for starters.
However it misses the latest Standards in Security such as PKI, SAML, XACML, WS-Federation, WS-Trust and how it pertains to SOA based solution architecture. So much for a book titled "SOA Security". Also it totally ignores to explain how to ensure security at all integration tiers.
Not for security experts, more for people who are starters and do not have time to "Google" either.
Does not do detailed coverage only basic topics related to Web services security around SOAP and WSDL standards with Apache Axis sample APIs (which are out of box and can be googled easily) are discussed. It is a bit difficult to relate the examples to the meat on the book.
Also missing is the information on how to use the abused Apache API examples to compose/build a Secure SOA service base architecture or how to secure BPM workflows, SOA governance, Identity management using federation, entitlement issues with BPM portals,... the list goes on.
This book contains very repetitive content. The only good portion I found was the chapter on XML Web services. The authors should refer Information Security Management Handbook, Sixth Edition (Isc2 Press) and Core Security Patterns: Best Practices and Strategies for J2EE(TM), Web Services, and Identity Management (Sun Core Series) before the next version comes out.

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SOA is one of the latest technologies enterprises are using to tame their software costs - in development, deployment, and management. SOA makes integration easy, helping enterprises not only better utilize their existing investments in applications and infrastructure, but also open up new business opportunities. However, one of the big stumbling blocks in executing SOA is security. This book addresses Security in SOA with detailed examples illustrating the theory, industry standards and best practices.

It is true that security is important in any system. SOA brings in additional security concerns as well rising out of the very openness that makes it attractive. If we apply security principles blindly, we shut ourselves of the benefits of SOA. Therefore, we need to understand which security models and techniques are right for SOA. This book provides such an understanding.

Usually, security is seen as an esoteric topic that is better left to experts. While it is true that security requires expert attention, everybody, including software developers, designers, architects, IT administrators and managers need to do tasks that require very good understanding of security topics. Fortunately, traditional security techniques have been around long enough for people to understand and apply them in practice. This, however, is not the case with SOA Security.

Anyone seeking to implement SOA Security is today forced to dig through a maze of inter-dependent specifications and API docs that assume a lot of prior experience on the part of readers. Getting started on a project is hence proving to be a huge challenge to practitioners. This book seeks to change that. It provides bottom-up understanding of security techniques appropriate for use in SOA without assuming any prior familiarity with security topics on the part of the reader.

Unlike most other books about SOA that merely describe the standards, this book helps you get started immediately by walking you through sample code that illustrates how real life problems can be solved using the techniques and best practices described in standards. Whereas standards discuss all possible variations of each security technique, this book focusses on the 20% of variations that are used 80% of the time. This keeps the material covered in the book simple as well as self-sufficient for all readers except the most advanced.

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Role-Based Access Control, Second Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)The three authors are leaders in RBAC research and development, making this book one of the most authoritative and complete references to RBAC.
Chapters 1 through 3 give a solid foundation for understanding RBAC and how it evolved, starting with an introduction, an exhaustive survey of access control methods needed to fully understand the evolution, and a solid and detailed overview of RBAC itself.
In the subsequent chapters each aspect of RBAC is covered in depth. Topics include role hierarchies, separation of duty policies, administration, integrating RBAC into existing infrastructures, and migration to RBAC. In addition, there are chapters on related topics that give this book wide scope - "Using RBAC to Implement Military Policies" shows how to implement multi-level security models with RBAC. This information uses military policies, but the material is also of interest to any commercial organization seeking tightly integrated access controls and a high security posture. The chapter on the proposed NIST RBAC standard also covers key items of interest, including Common Criteria RBAC protection profiles and other conformance issues. There are also chapters on RBAC research and prototypes, and commercial products.
While this book is well written and uses illustrations to impart key concepts, you will need to be conversant with set theory in order to get the most from it, as well as understand RBAC itself. If you are a bit rusty I recommend refreshing your skills before diving into this book.
If you want to explore RBAC and the work of each of the authors visit NIST Computer Security Division and Computer Security Research by pasting the ASIN, B0001O48Y4, into the search box, selecting all products and clicking GO. Once you are on the site you'll find the RBAC section under Security Research/Emerging Technologies->Authorization Management and Advanced Access Control Models (AM&AACM) link.

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Role-based access control (RBAC) is a security mechanism that has gained wide acceptance in the field because it can greatly lower the cost and complexity of securing large networked and Web-based systems. Written by leading experts, this newly revised edition of the Artech House bestseller, Role-Based Access Control, offers practitioners the very latest details on this popular network security model. The second edition provides more comprehensive and updated coverage of access control models, new RBAC standards, new case studies and discussions on role engineering and the design of role-based systems. This authoritative book offers professionals an in-depth understanding of role hierarchies and role engineering that are so crucial to ensuring total access control with RBAC. The book guides security administrators through the various RBAC products available on the market and along the migration path to implementing RBAC. This unique resource also covers the RBAC standard proposed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

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Securing Web Services with WS-Security: Demystifying WS-Security, WS-Policy, SAML, XML Signature, and XML Encryption Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Agree completely with all of the other reviewers in respect to practical working examples and detailed information. This is nothing more than a high-level overview of documentation and specifications you can easily find yourself on the internet. Look elsewhere (and yeah, I'm still looking myself) for solid information about how to design and deploy WS-* applications.

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Enterprise Service Bus: Theory in Practice Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Chappell describes a highly promising but still speculative technology for connecting together enterprise-wide computations. It can also potentially be used to span different companies. Some of you may groan. Haven't we heard this already, several times? Remember the toutings of CORBA, Java's RMI, JMX, JMS, and the nascent Web Services?
Well, ESB draws upon often bitter lessons learnt with these earlier endeavours. CORBA was widely found to be too complex. RMI works only for tightly coupled systems, which do not scale well. So that became one reason for JMS, because it enabled loose coupling. But JMS is too low level. Web Services may indeed be promising, but face a danger of overspecifying a standard before enough practical experience is garnered.
ESB tries to subsume the best ideas from the above, and from other efforts. It promises loose coupling and an incremental rollout, amongst other things. The incremental ability may be key to getting a small scale project approved and implemented, due to its minimal investment.
You could think of ESB as taking the ideas of the JMX management console a step further. Plus, ESB can use JMX as a subsidiary technology.
Chappell also offers nice visual component schematics that could be used to represent and perhaps even assemble an ESB network. If this indeed is possible, it would be tremendous. Akin to the 1980s, when MicroSim offered a graphical version of Spice, with electronic parts availabled from a menu.

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Large IT organizations increasingly face the challenge of integrating various web services, applications, and other technologies into a single network.The solution to finding a meaningful large-scale architecture that is capable of spanning a global enterprise appears to have been met in ESB, or Enterprise Service Bus.Rather than conform to the hub-and-spoke architecture of traditional enterprise application integration products, ESB provides a highly distributed approach to integration, with unique capabilities that allow individual departments or business units to build out their integration projects in incremental, digestible chunks, maintaining their own local control and autonomy, while still being able to connect together each integration project into a larger, more global integration fabric, or grid.

Enterprise Service Bus offers a thorough introduction and overview for systems architects, system integrators, technical project leads, and CTO/CIO level managers who need to understand, assess, and evaluate this new approach. Written by Dave Chappell, one of the best known and authoritative voices in the field of enterprise middleware and standards-based integration, the book drills down into the technical details of the major components of ESB, showing how it can utilize an event-driven SOA to bring a variety of enterprise applications and services built on J2EE, .NET, C/C++, and other legacy environments into the reach of the everyday IT professional.

With Enterprise Service Bus, readers become well versed in the problems faced by IT organizations today, gaining an understanding of how current technology deficiencies impact business issues. Through the study of real-world use cases and integration patterns drawn from several industries using ESB--including Telcos, financial services, retail, B2B exchanges, energy, manufacturing, and more--the book clearly and coherently outlines the benefits of moving toward this integration strategy.The book also compares ESB to other integration architectures, contrasting their inherent strengths and limitations.

If you are charged with understanding, assessing, or implementing an integration architecture, Enterprise Service Bus will provide the straightforward information you need to draw your conclusions about this important disruptive technology.

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Core Security Patterns: Best Practices and Strategies for J2EE™, Web Services, and Identity Management Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the best book I ever had for Java security. This book talks everything you need to know about java security architecture and how to implement them with patterns. In addition to patterns, the book also recommends security bestpractices considerations for J2EE production, how to do proactive and reactive security assessments using well-defined checklists, security design case-study for portal. Undoubtedly, this book is very easy to understand, good code examples and nicely organized to support the needs of a Java developer. It is highly recommended for anyone wants to get involved with security architecture in J2EE applications and web services. If you are a Java guy..then go for it.

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Praise for Core Security Patterns
"Java provides the application developer with essential security mechanisms and support in avoiding critical security bugs common in other languages. A language, however, can only go so far. The developer must understand the security requirements of the application and how to use the features Java provides in order to meet those requirements. Core Security Patterns addresses both aspects of security and will be a guide to developers everywhere in creating more secure applications."

--Whitfield Diffie, inventor of Public-Key Cryptography

"A comprehensive book on Security Patterns, which are critical for secure programming."

--Li Gong, former Chief Java Security Architect, Sun Microsystems, and coauthor of Inside Java 2 Platform Security

"As developers of existing applications, or future innovators that will drive the next generation of highly distributed applications, the patterns and best practices outlined in this book will be an important asset to your development efforts."

--Joe Uniejewski, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, RSA Security, Inc.

"This book makes an important case for taking a proactive approach to security rather than relying on the reactive security approach common in the software industry."

--Judy Lin, Executive Vice President, VeriSign, Inc.

"Core Security Patterns provides a comprehensive patterns-driven approach and methodology for effectively incorporating security into your applications. I recommend that every application developer keep a copy of this indispensable security reference by their side."

--Bill Hamilton, author of ADO.NET Cookbook, ADO.NET in a Nutshell, and NUnit Pocket Reference

"As a trusted advisor, this book will serve as a Java developer™s security handbook, providing applied patterns and design strategies for securing Java applications."

--Shaheen Nasirudheen, CISSP,Senior Technology Officer, JPMorgan Chase

"Like Core J2EE Patterns, this book delivers a proactive and patterns-driven approach for designing end-to-end security in your applications. Leveraging the authors™ strong security experience, they created a must-have book for any designer/developer looking to create secure applications."

--John Crupi, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems, coauthor of Core J2EE Patterns

Core Security Patterns is the hands-on practitioner™s guide to building robust end-to-end security into J2EE' enterprise applications, Web services, identity management, service provisioning, and personal identification solutions. Written by three leading Java security architects, the patterns-driven approach fully reflects today™s best practices for security in large-scale, industrial-strength applications.

The authors explain the fundamentals of Java application security from the ground up, then introduce a powerful, structured security methodology; a vendor-independent security framework; a detailed assessment checklist; and twenty-three proven security architectural patterns. They walk through several realistic scenarios, covering architecture and implementation and presenting detailed sample code. They demonstrate how to apply cryptographic techniques; obfuscate code; establish secure communication; secure J2ME' applications; authenticate and authorize users; and fortify Web services, enabling single sign-on, effective identity management, and personal identification using Smart Cards and Biometrics.

Core Security Patterns covers all of the following, and more:

What works and what doesn™t: J2EE application-security best practices, and common pitfalls to avoid

Implementing key Java platform security features in real-world applications

Establishing Web Services security using XML Signature, XML Encryption, WS-Security, XKMS, and WS-I Basic security profile

Designing identity management and service provisioning systems using SAML, Liberty, XACML, and SPML

Designing secure personal identification solutions using Smart Cards and Biometrics

Security design methodology, patterns, best practices, reality checks, defensive strategies, and evaluation checklists

End-to-end security architecture case study: architecting, designing, and implementing an end-to-end security solution for large-scale applications

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Exploring IBM SOA Technology & Practice Review

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(More customer reviews)I was an IBM Fellow and Chief Architect for IBM Software Group. I helped lead the team that produced many of IBM's SOA products, as well as author many of the industry specifications. I am currently a Technical Fellow at Microsoft.
This book is excellent for teams starting SOA projects, or moving to the next level in SOA and Web services. IBM's products appear complex due to the depth and breadth of functions. This is not the case. The most common question in my customer briefings was "What do we do next, and how do we get started." IBMers presenting the big picture and next steps is not scalable; there are only so many briefers.
This book codifies the most important information that teams need. The authors have extensive experience working on projects with customers, and enabling successful projects. Writing this information in a book will allow other teams to succeed based on best practices and hard won experience for early adopters.
This book is a critical resource for any SOA/Web service team

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Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a major technology trend focused on making corporate information technology (IT) an enabler of business flexibility and innovation. While SOA is not the unique province of any single vendor, IBM has taken a leadership position in the industry and is actively helping organizations in many industries be successful with SOA. This book will help you migrate your existing computing infrastructure in the direction of a service oriented architecture using IBM technology and services. In Exploring IBM SOA Technology & Practice, IBM SOA expert Bobby Woolf explores IBM's vision for success with SOA. Woolf starts by describing the reasons an organization should consider adopting SOA. Issues and challenges faced once you decide to adopt SOA are examined. Guidance is given on how to prepare, select good SOA projects, and how to structure a committee to manage all SOA projects in an organization. Woolf then moves in for a closer look at the nuts and bolts of SOA including the IBM SOA Reference Architecture, the suite of IBM products/services (e.g., IBM WebSphere) used to implement that architecture, and SOA application development practices. Vital topics such as lifecycle management and governance are covered. At the "Member's Only" Web site, you will find direct links to a rich array of SOA videos, Webcasts, white papers, and other SOA resources to help your projects succeed. This book is a key resource for IT professionals and business people who work closely with IT and want to learn how to use SOA to make their corporations more successful and it shows how they can work with IBM to achieve that success.

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SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design (Theory in Practice) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The book starts very well and you become very excited about what the future chapters will hold. I must say that the writer is an excellent writer and knows how to captivate you, but that only lasts as long as what he's talking about entertains. The chapters that a few here seemed to have liked were the best parts of the book, but even they were average at best. I was a little dissapointed that he gave examples of complex objects being returned from service calls, but never addressed methods that used XML instead of complex objects and in turn majority of the versioning section was based on versioning and problems that occur when dealing with complex objects. I did like the opinions he gave on using web services as means of realizing SOA. For those who didn't read the book, he doesn't think much of web services because of the many different standards organizations and the many versions of standards that are used to implement web services - these issues create interoperability problems when you're ultimately looking for high interoperability with SOA.
Overall, this book maybe of interest to a business person or IT manager trying to understand what SOA is, but it's not that great for technologists looking for implementations that may fit their system. Three Stars!!!

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This book demonstrates service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a concrete discipline rather than a hopeful collection of cloud charts. Built upon the author's firsthand experience rolling out a SOA at a major corporation, SOA in Practice explains how SOA can simplify the creation and maintenance of large-scale applications. Whether your project involves a large set of Web Services-based components, or connects legacy applications to modern business processes, this book clarifies how -- and whether -- SOA fits your needs. SOA has been a vision for years. This book brings it down to earth by describing the real-world problems of implementing and running a SOA in practice. After defining SOA's many facets, examining typical use patterns, and exploring how loose coupling helps build stronger applications, SOA in Practice presents a framework to help you determine when to take advantage of SOA. In this book you will:

Focus squarely on real deployment and technology, not just standards maps
Examine business problems to determine which ones fit a SOA approach before plastering a SOA solution on top of them
Find clear paths for building solutions without getting trapped in the mire of changing web services details
Gain the experience of a systems analyst intimately involved with SOA
"The principles and experiences described in this book played an important role in making SOA at T-Mobile a success story, with more than 10 million service calls per day." --Dr. Steffen Roehn, Member of the Executive Committee T-Mobile International (CIO) "Nicolai Josuttis has produced something that is rare in the over-hyped world of SOA; a thoughtful work with deep insights based on hands-on experiences. This book is a significant milestone in promoting practical disciplines for all SOA practitioners." --John Schmidt, Chairman, Integration Consortium "The book belongs in the hands of every CIO, IT Director and IT planning manager." --Dr. Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO, Object Management Group; Executive Director, SOA Consortium

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Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices Review

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(More customer reviews)Too many "SOA" books are either API documents or high-level hand waving. You can tell that this book is based on actual project experience. The authors manage to give actionable guidance and explain their reasoning well without diving into too many technology details. If you are interested in the "A" of "SOA", you will like this book.

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This book spells out guidelines and strategies for successfully using ServiceOriented Architecture (SOA) in large-scale projects. SOA represents the latestparadigm in distributed computing and middleware development. However,SOA is not a revolution, but rather an evolution in software architecture. SOAis a collection of best practice software construction principles accompanied byproven methodologies in development and project management.This book is unique in that it offers a pragmatic approach to the topic. Theauthors borrow from their more than forty years of collective enterpriseexperience, and offer a frank discussion of the challenges associated withadopting SOA. They also help readers ensure that their organization does notbecome too closely tied to a specific technology. The result is a detailedintroduction to the topic and an architectural blueprint for implementing SOA.

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