Designing Network Security

Excellent overview of network security issues. Covers almost all threats, protocols and safeguards in a concise manner. One of the books that should be read for CISSP preparation.

Bogs down when it gets to Cisco specific configurations. As a CCIE, even I find that books of this type provide only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the complexity of Cisco configurations.
Rating: 4 / 5

Exam 640-442 is the Security Specialistization for people who have attained their CCNP certification. Excellent coverage of AAA, TACACS+, RADIUS, PIX, 3DES, DMZ as well as IPSEC and CBAC. This is alot of material to be discussed in one book. Cisco provides a CD ROM with this same material for $250.00, this is a much better deal. If you want to enhance your knowledge of access-lists, reflexive access-lists etc. this is the book for you. Merike did her homework on this material, I completed many of the configurations presented in the book, they were accurate.
Rating: 5 / 5

Up through Chapter 7, this book presents a fairly good overview of information security in general, network security basics, cryptography, and a good measure of “security philosophy” as well. It reads pretty well and there are relatively few inconsistencies, until…

From Chapter 8 onwards, there are lots of mistakes (my personal favorite is a botched explanation of TCP proxies on page 248) and many cases of examples not matching the explanatory text. And when it comes to enabling TACACS+ on routers, some sections of this book directly contradict Cisco’s “IOS 12 Network Security” book.

All in all, a decent reference for Cisco routers & firewalls, but you might want to supplement it with something more substantial. The O’Reilly books and Cheswick/Bellovin come to mind…
Rating: 2 / 5

This is a big book, 745 pages, a bit about almost every topic in information security. The advantage of a book like this is that if you want to know three paragraphs about a security term that you are not familiar with, you can find it. The disadvantage of these survey type books is that they do not usually give you enough information to do anything.

Though there are some spots especially in the first few chapters where this happens, Merike Kaeo, the author, quickly succeeds in making this a book that goes beyond telling the reader about things and begins to share how to do things on Cisco equipment which is far more valuable. If you are a Cisco network engineer or administrator and are interested in learning more about information security this is probably a good book for you. I think this book would also benefit a manager or someone with purely theoretical information security knowledge that wants to be able ask technical people pragmatic questions.

The Voice over IP chapter was one of the clearest explanations I have seen, however a bit more of a warning about security, changing standards and interoperability would have been appreciated.

When work begins on 3rd edition, I would suggest more focus on using routing and switching technology to segment the internal network so a worm infection does not take down the entire facility. In general user VLANS to not need to talk to other user VLANS, they only need to communicate with servers.

My favorite part of the book is Appendix D, somehow I had never seen Rob Thomas paper on DDOS.
Rating: 4 / 5

I really enjoyed reading this book. Lot’s of information pertaining to PIX, Access-lists, Distribute Lists, IPsec. Every angle was covered, I compared to the Cisco 12.0 Ios Network Security book, this one had more detail. Which is difficult considering how much is covered with Cisco documentation. If you’ve read the articles pertaining to Cisco’s investment in the Security market, you’ve got to have this book. This book is the security what Halibi’s book is to BGP.
Rating: 5 / 5