Linux Server Security seems to be the buzzword in corporates and a lot of Infrastructure Services Group Leaders are spending considerable amounts of time securing the systems.
Server Security has for long been considered as somewhat of a black art with the arcane details of it being shared among the few members who are part of the charmed circle. This book attempts to put the logical nature of Server Security in perspective by bringing together both the fundamentals as well as the practical toolsuites which help a long way in providing stable and secure Linux servers. If not for anything else, then for a description of the toolsuites this book is a worthy reference material.
The section on Cyrus IMAP service is a welcome addition. As the world slowly moves towards a Cyrus-SASL-Kerberos stack for the mailing services, securing such service would be a high item on the agenda. The discussion of the services that make up various Linux servers, beginning with the basic principles and slowly moving into the security best practices would be useful to those who want to create secure server services but were at a loss in the sea of URLs.
The sections on Database Security, Intrusion Detection Services and System Log management are well written especially for the novice users. The underlying assumption that secure bastion hosts are required by anybody drives the book towards a very granular level of discussion of the services. Be warned however, that firewall as a component is not discussed in great detail. A subset of the same is provided but enough forward looking references are provided which can be put to implementation and further tweaking.
Securing Linux services is best done through tinkering and practical implementation of the tools. The fundamental principles provide the underlying causal agents and causal loops, without implementation nothing much is possible.
In short, it is a very good book and worth buying. Go ahead and get your copy.
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