Managing A Network Vulnerability Assessment

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 312 pages
• Published by: Auerbach Publications
• Edition: 1st Edition May 28, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0849312701
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0849312700
• Book Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.2 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Review
Promo Copy

Readers will find detailed definitions, thorough explanations, step-by-step procedures, and sample reports to guide them through a network vulnerability assessment (NVA). … [The book] is clear and easy to read, conveying the authors' outstanding grasp of the material. Despite the extremely detailed content, the presentation is not too technical or confusing. Numerous graphs, sample reports, and computer illustrations effectively support the text. … Of the many readers who would benefit from this work, security managers responsible for computer protection will learn how to conduct an NVA. IT professionals will benefit from the exposure to detailed security concepts and procedures. Finally, college instructors and students will find that the work serves as an great educational resource.
- Security Management, Sept. 2004

Readers will find detailed definitions, thorough explanations, step-by-step procedures, and sample reports to guide them through a network vulnerability assessment (NVA). … [The book] is clear and easy to read, conveying the authors outstanding grasp of the material. Despite the extremely detailed content, the presentation is not too technical or confusing. Numerous graphs, sample reports, and computer illustrations effectively support the text. … Of the many readers who would benefit from this work, security managers responsible for computer protection will learn how to conduct an NVA. IT professionals will benefit from the exposure to detailed security concepts and procedures. Finally, college instructors and students will find that the work serves as an great educational resource.
- Security Management, Sept. 2004

Product Description
The instant access that hackers have to the latest tools and techniques demands that companies become more aggressive in defending the security of their networks. Conducting a network vulnerability assessment, a self-induced hack attack, identifies the network components and faults in policies, and procedures that expose a company to the damage caused by malicious network intruders. Managing a Network Vulnerability Assessment provides a formal framework for finding and eliminating network security threats, ensuring that no vulnerabilities are overlooked. This thorough overview focuses on the steps necessary to successfully manage an assessment, including the development of a scope statement, the understanding and proper use of assessment methodology, the creation of an expert assessment team, and the production of a valuable response report. The book also details what commercial, freeware, and shareware tools are available, how they work, and how to use them. By following the procedures outlined in this guide, a company can pinpoint what individual parts of their network need to be hardened, and avoid expensive and unnecessary purchases.

Reader Reviews
This is a good book, especially enlightening for those "security pros" who think that running a major commercial scanner and then printing a 500 page report constitutes "vulnerability assessment"! The book clearly favors management skills over technical ones. It contains many valuable tidbits on things like proper process, methodology, policy, planning and organization. Project scoping is well-covered as well as documentation development (looks good for consultants). The book also relates its assessment methodology to ISO 17799 standard. The book advocates a holistic approach, assessing both policy and technical vulnerabilities and not just scan-and-leave. It contains a nice policy review guidelines by the area of security policy. On the other hand, the section on actually conducting the technical assessment is two pages long out of the books's 186 total number of pages. Lots of "what" with little "how". The technical tools section is a joke. Some examples include: "tcpdump" is absent from the sniffers section, "nmap" - from scanners (mentioned twice in application fingerprinting tools though), queso (which is not currently updated) is recommended, NetSonar is called a promising scanner (the product is long discontinued). You wouldn't believe it was supposedly written in 2003! Other tool descriptions are generic and seem inspired by product web pages rather than the actual tool use. In addition, there is nothing worse than outdated website guide and this book is firmly there :-) No Google, attrition.org is described as a major defacement mirror (its that no more), etc. It is interesting how authors define "vulnerabilities" as published holes or even well-publicized ones (since, according to them, even a web post to a "less known website" supposedly doesn't make the vulnerability public!) Thus, the book is mostly about 'script kiddie defense'. But then again - it does make sense to start somewhere and if you are being constantly "owned" by such attackers - you clearly need to work on your vulnerabilities. Overall, the information in the book is well-organized, I liked chapter summaries and lots of various assessment checklists. Beware of typos though, the book has lots of them. Anton Chuvakin, Ph.D., GCIA, GCIH is a Senior Security Analyst with a major information security company. His areas of infosec expertise include intrusion detection, UNIX security, forensics, honeypots, etc. In his spare time, he maintains his security portal info-secure.org