Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant book on firewall theory and internet security.
Review: This is a fabulous book for someone that wants to learn the theories of internet security.It's written by two people that developed the firewall as we know it today. They share their stories of actual security breaches, and how the tracked and resolved the problem. To get the most out of this book you should have an understanding of TCP/IP, UDP, and other internet protocols. The book takes you through why you need security and developing a security policy. It gives you an overview of TCP/IP. The book does a good job of teaching you about the different types of firewalls available from firewall gateways, to application gateways. This is a must have book for all system administrators, not just security folks.
Rating:
Summary: The book on firewalls
Review: This is THE book on firewalls. If you want information from the authoritative sources, this is the book to get. If you can tolerate the anti-Microsoft aspect, read on!
Rating:
Summary: Good upgrade to a classic
Review: This second edition has all the qualities the first edition had 10 years ago: Their writing is clear, they provide a sober assessment of the costs & benefits of various services (as opposed to other reviewers, I don't think the authors had much of an anti-Microsoft bias, just a realistic perspective on where Windows products are regarding security). The book is still fairly compact and it comes with an excellent biography and pointers to security software.
Rating:
Summary: Good upgrade to a classic
Review: This second edition has all the qualities the first edition had 10 years ago: Their writing is clear, they provide a sober assessment of the costs & benefits of various services (as opposed to other reviewers, I don't think the authors had much of an anti-Microsoft bias, just a realistic perspective on where Windows products are regarding security). The book is still fairly compact and it comes with an excellent biography and pointers to security software.
Rating: 
Summary: A timeless intro to Unix security
Review: While written in 1994 (with a second edition coming soon), I feel that this book is nevertheless a must read for people who are first getting into Unix network security. Many of the concepts covered here such as firewall design, software exploits, and hacker methodology apply to today as much as it did then. In addition, knowing the network security scene then helps those who are unfamiliar with the history of network security better appreciate how far things have come. In those days, such Unix tools as SSH, Pam, and PGP were not widespread (and not covered in this book much), and instead people were still relying on the r-tools, telnet, and archie. Readers will find this rather nostalgic, but the threats posed by use of these tools is surprisingly relevent. Password sniffing ftp connections is a threat just as it is now, RPC and NFS are still major security threats and so on. One thing that I felt did detract from this book was the somewhat excessive coverage of the authors own modified tools. I feel that altering the Unix tools to fit their security needs was brilliant, and an inspiration to other network security folks, but nonetheless the book had more detail on this topic than I felt was necessary. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the coverage of hacker methodology. The "Berferd" chapter was truly a fun thing to read. In this chapter, you read about a real incident involving an infamous hacker at the time as he tries to penetrate the AT&T network, and the back and forth battle between the authors and the hacker. Very compelling. Other chapters also cover hacker methodology very well too. This I feel is what seperates this book from other books. Its not enough to learn about security, because if you don't understand the "thought process" and the way hackers probe the system, then security won't mean much. In short, the dedication the authors feel towards network security really shows in this book. For such a small book, I feel I learned alot, and have developed a greater appreciation for the ongoing struggle to defend networks from wily hackers. This book is really worth reading.
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