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Introduction to Computer Security
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by Matt Bishop
Sales Rank: 45411
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Discount: 24 %
List Price: $64.99
$51.99
At Amazon
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Hardcover: 784 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional November 5, 2004
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0321247442
ISBN-13: 978-0321247445
Product Dimensions:
9.4 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
Back Cover Copy
In this authoritative book, widely respected practitioner and teacher Matt Bishop presents a clear and useful introduction to the art and science of information security. Bishop's insights and realistic examples will help any practitioner or student understand the crucial links between security theory and the day-to-day security challenges of IT environments.
Bishop explains the fundamentals of security: the different types of widely used policies, the mechanisms that implement these policies, the principles underlying both policies and mechanisms, and how attackers can subvert these tools--as well as how to defend against attackers. A practicum demonstrates how to apply these ideas and mechanisms to a realistic company.
Coverage includes - Confidentiality, integrity, and availability
- Operational issues, cost-benefit and risk analyses, legal and human factors
- Planning and implementing effective access control
- Defining security, confidentiality, and integrity policies
- Using cryptography and public-key systems, and recognizing their limits
- Understanding and using authentication: from passwords to biometrics
- Security design principles: least-privilege, fail-safe defaults, open design, economy of mechanism, and more
- Controlling information flow through systems and networks
- Assuring security throughout the system lifecycle
- Malicious logic: Trojan horses, viruses, boot sector and executable infectors, rabbits, bacteria, logic bombs--and defenses against them
- Vulnerability analysis, penetration studies, auditing, and intrusion detection and prevention
- Applying security principles to networks, systems, users, and programs
Introduction to Computer Security is adapted from Bishop's comprehensive and widely praised book, Computer Security: Art and Science. This shorter version of the original work omits much mathematical formalism, making it more accessible for professionals and students who have a less formal mathematical background, or for readers with a more practical than theoretical interest.
About The Author
Matt Bishop is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California at Davis. A recognized expert in vulnerability analysis, secure systems/software design, network security, access control, authentication, and UNIX security, Bishop also works to improve computer security instruction.
Customer Reviews & Comments
I hate to be the fly in the ointment of the other reviews. But as someone who is more concerned with protecting his networks than trying to figure out the math behind the security, I found this book's title and description on the back cover as well as in the preface to be *highly* misleading. By reading the preface and the back of the book, you gain absolutely no indication that this book is mired in mathematical theory with very little practical application to the everyday, IT environment. The only possible audience for this book comprises computer science students and software engineers who are into encryption, cipher algorithms, and related theories. There is absolutely no indication of that until you actually start getting into the chapters. That is not to belittle Mr. Bishop, what he knows, or what he does. I have no doubt that as a professor at the University of California at Davis he is well respected and very knowledgeable of his field. I'm equally sure that in a scientific, trivia challenge, his knowledge and experience would beat me into the ground until I was just a thin, red film. I'm only saying that this book is not one that I can recommend to anyone who is looking for practical, security solutions, contrary to what the title might infer. It is far too mathematical in nature and creates complexities to the theories of computer security that frankly do not apply to the day-to-day systems and network administrator. In the real world practical, IT solutions include identifying how potential intruders might gain entry to the network. Practical solutions also include how to identify weaknesses in the existing network infrastructure as well as weaknesses in the existing authentication mechanism, among others. Once these weaknesses are identified, IT people need practical solutions to eliminate those weaknesses. Even if the potential solutions are not practical at the current time, identifying what can happen until such time must happen for in order to plan the next stage of securing the environment. These matters are certainly discussed but not in ways that most IT professional would consider to be valuable. Discussions on the Chinese Wall Model, lattices, and the Extended Euclidean algorithm are not going to be of any practical use whatsoever when you are looking to select and implement an authentication mechanism for a heterogeneous enterprise, nor are they going to be of value when you're looking a Sarbanes-Oxley auditor in the eye and he asks "So, please explain your network security implementations and how you plan on securing your login procedures." Unfortunately, even those topics that have no direct relation to mathematics, such as availability and the implementation of an auditing system, are described through mathematical formulae. To most IT personnel, auditing involves intruder detection, log scanning, network monitoring, SNMP traps, and of course reporting tools to determine when there is suspicious activity. If I went to my manager and said that we have to anticipate pending connections based on the formula a + b is greater than cb, he'd tell me to contact the confidential, Employee Help line. I can only imagine what he'd tell me if I said that we have to tune our incoming-packet, time-out value in the Solaris kernel to be based on the Linux implementation of the Berstein and Shenk formula of h(s1,sa,sp,da,dp,s1) + n + ((2^24)*t) + [h(s2, sa,sp,da,dp,s2) mod 2^24]. Now, in fairness my review might be rather harsh, but I think it's more the frustration that this book's description is not accurate to its contents and expectations that it puts on the potential reader. Perhaps it is accurate when it comes to the actual content as suggested by the other glowing reviews, but it most certainly is not when it comes to the expected audience or what their expectation might be. In this case I'm sure that this is the right book, but the way that the preface and and back cover are written clearly are not indicative of the intended audience. Metaphorically speaking, I was expecting to find directions so that I could drive to the nearest grocery store. Instead, I ended up reading about the physics of depressing the accelerator pedal with just the right amount of pressure in combination with the thermodynamics of the detonation of a combustible, fuel substance with a mixture of oxygen and the appropriate temperature and aperture of the ignition mechanism to create the most efficient energy source within a controlled environment. Additionally, I received information about the methodologies of harnessing that thermodynamic energy and converting it through the appropriate gear and torque mechanisms to a forward thrust thus making it possible to move the vehicle in the direction intended while simultaneously balancing out the appropriate fluid injection and combustion level. Also taken into consideration was the manipulation of the speed impedance lever so as to reduce or cease in its entirety the inertial momentum, regardless of direction, of the vehicle when necessary. Let us not forget the guidance controlling mechanism thus altering the directional inertia of the vehicle so as to project it to the destination position to which I expect the vehicle to travel. Even with all of that, I still don't know where the nearest grocery store is.
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Introduction to Computer Security
List Price: $64.99
Discount: 24 %
Available from Amazon
Price: $51.99
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