BKHYLTCG.RVW   20020825

"Have You Locked the Castle Gate", Brian Shea, 2002, 0-201-71955-X,
U$19.99/C$31.99
%A   Brian Shea
%C   P.O. Box 520, 26 Prince Andrew Place, Don Mills, Ontario  M3C 2T8
%D   2002
%G   0-201-71955-X
%I   Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
%O   U$19.99/C$31.99 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948
%P   193 p.
%T   "Have You Locked the Castle Gate: Home and Small Business
      Security"

Chapter one is entitled "Assessing Risk."  It deals with the basic
concepts, but in a somewhat confused manner, and sometimes stresses or
sensationalizes minor points.  A grab bag of security concepts drifts
into Windows specifics in chapter two.  The author has said that he
will be concentrating on Windows, since it is the most widely used
system for home computers, but the material tells only *how* to, for
example, set up groups, and not what groups are used for in terms of
security.  Chapter three is more of the same: more miscellany, and
more Windows.  The discussion of servers, in chapter four, is almost
entirely devoted to Windows, and is weak on security concepts and
technologies such as firewalls.  There is a set of vague ideas about
the Internet in chapter five.  Chapter six, on email security, has
some good suggestions, but a number of gaps.  Web security is a
questionable checklist of browser settings, almost entirely for
Internet Explorer, in chapter seven.  "Defending Against Hackers," in
chapter eight, sounds like it should be important, but it is hard to
find any point.  Chapter nine, on viruses, starts with a surprisingly
good set of definitions (recognizably from "Robert Slade's Guide to
Computer Viruses") but quickly deteriorates into errors (the Internet
Worm was *not* an accident), and poor suggestions (it does not make an
awful lot of sense to talk about "boot disks" for scanning Windows
systems without getting into a lot of detail).

I am all in favour of having a relatively simple and straightforward
guide to security for home and small business users.  But Jeff Crume
already did "Inside Internet Security" (cf. BKININSC.RVW), and did a
much better job.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2002   BKHYLTCG.RVW   20020825