Book details of 'Safe & Secure: Secure Your Home Network, and Protect Your Privacy Online'

Title	Safe & Secure: Secure Your Home Network, and Protect Your Privacy Online
Author(s)	Felix Lau, Arman Danesh, Ali Mehrassa
ISBN	0672322439
Language	English
Published	August 2001
Publisher	Sams

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Safe & Secure: Secure Your Home Network, and Protect Your Privacy Online':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
The introduction states that the book is intended to help home Internet users protect themselves. Part one deals with Internet basics and threats. The material is brief and simplistic. It is easily within the grasp of home users, but it is difficult to say that the background provided is either necessary or sufficient as a basis for security needs. Chapter one briefly lists a few of the dangers you can encounter on the net. Even more briefly, chapter two mentions some of the protective measures that can address the reported hazards. An elementary overview of aspects of TCP/IP makes up chapter three. Chapter four, the longest in this section, contains material on networking hardware, topologies, and application considerations that home users are extremely unlikely to encounter. Part two addresses the protection of a home computer. Chapter five supposedly deals with the protection of a network-connected standalone computer, which would seem to be a contradiction in terms. The text deals with the Windows 98/ME operating system, which was current at the time the book was published, but in such a lockstep fashion that it is basically useless for anything else. Wireless LAN technology is tersely reviewed in chapter six. Chapter seven prints the screenshots for an installation of a version of the Zonealarm software personal firewall. There are sloppy definitions of viruses, worms, and trojan horse programs in chapter eight. Installation screenshots for a couple of widely-sold virus scanning programs are in chapter nine. Part three looks to the defence of a local area network in the home. Chapter ten provides a high level overview of firewalls, with much of the material being unsuitable for the needs of the home user. Screenshots for the Windows settings required for a dual-homed (dual network card) circuit-level proxy firewall (which seems to be an awfully complicated setup for a home user) are printed in chapter eleven. Setup screens for a few hardware packet filtering and address translation firewalls are in chapter twelve. Telecommuting is discussed in chapter thirteen, with some mentions of security factors. Virtual private networks, probably not an issue for home users, are considered in chapter fourteen: again, Windows software settings are the major issue. Chapter fifteen ponders the risks of running servers (such as private Web servers) on a home machine, primarily addressed via port restriction. Privacy and data security are addressed in part four. Most of the material on human factors, in chapter sixteen, consists of standard identity theft prevention advice. There is reasonable information about cookies in chapter seventeen. The content about anonymous browsing and email, in chapter eighteen, is brief, and of limited value. Chapter nineteen, on encryption, gives severely limited background and predominately includes PGP installation screenshots. Part five looks at testing and recovery. Chapter twenty has a plausible examination of port scanning. Twenty-one talks about logs, but is not of much help in demonstrating how to use them. Some basic steps when a problem becomes evident are listed in chapter twenty-two. Chapter twenty-three essentially says to keep your software up to date. Screenshots for the Microsoft Backup program are in chapter twenty-five. The home user requires basic information about computer and Internet security. The content of this book never gets too deep for the average person, and does provide some useful advice for many of the most common problems. At the same time, there are vital issues that the home user may see daily which are not addressed. In addition, much of the content of the book is of almost no interest to those outside of a commercial or corporate environment. Therefore, while there is some value in the work, a great deal of extraneous text has to be mined in order to find it. This means that you can't just give this volume to your Mom in order to keep her computer safe. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2005
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Book description:

Safe & Secure: Secure Your Home Network, and Protect Your Privacy Online gives you a solid understanding of what is necessary to secure your networked machine. Written in layman's terms, this book describes personal Internet security, with careful consideration given to the reality of the SOHO environment. It covers basic topics such as TCP/IP, cookies, firewalls, virus protection, reviews of current home security software, information regarding public key encryption, and a special section on getting and using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) personal security software. Information on maintaining individual privacy, managing security audits, and backup and recovery empowers you, and helps protect you from intrusion or other Internet attacks. Download Description Safe & Secure: Secure Your Home Network, and Protect Your Privacy Online gives you a solid understanding of what is necessary to secure your networked machine. Written in layman's terms, this book describes personal Internet security, with careful consideration given to the reality of the SOHO environment. It covers basic topics such as TCP/IP, cookies, firewalls, virus protection, reviews of current home security software, information regarding public key encryption, and a special section on getting and using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) personal security software. Information on maintaining individual privacy, managing security audits, and backup and recovery empowers you, and helps protect you from intrusion or other Internet attacks. From the Back Cover Safe & Secure: Secure Your Home Network, and Protect Your Privacy Online gives you a solid understanding of what is necessary to secure your networked machine. Written in layman's terms, this book describes personal Internet security, with careful consideration given to the reality of the SOHO environment. It covers basic topics such as TCP/IP, cookies, firewalls, virus protection, reviews of current home security software, information regarding public key encryption, and a special section on getting and using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) personal security software. Information on maintaining individual privacy, managing security audits, and backup and recovery empowers you, and helps protect you from intrusion or other Internet attacks. About the Author Arman Danesh is the author of numerous books on computers and has extensive experience as a network administrator securing networks in North America and Europe. He also manages Web sites for international organizations including The Baha'I World, the official Web site of Baha'I International Community. He is pursuing an advanced degree in computer science, and his thesis research relates to security models for ad hoc networks. Ali Mehrassa is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science at Simon Fraser University. His career in information technology began as a quality assurance analyst in the computer game industry. Felix Lau is pursuing an advanced degree in computer science at Simon Fraser University. His research and education focus includes networking, collaborative technologies, and distributed computing. As an independent consultant, he has helped companies develop wireless ad hoc collaborative applications.