Computer Security Fundamentals

by Chuck Easttom

KEY BENEFIT This gateway into the world of computer security provides one-volume coverage of all the basic concepts, terminology and issues, along with practical skills essential to security. Topics covered range from those commonly found in security books such as virus attacks, buffer overflow, hacking spyware and network defense, as well as more specialized areas including cyber terrorism, industrial espionage and encryption. Providing a comprehensive introduction, this volumes examines assessing a target system, denial of service attacks, malware, basics of assessing and securing a system, encryption, Internet fraud, and cyber crime, industrial espionage, cyber terrorism and information warfare, cyber detective, security hardware and software. For system analysts network administrators, network security professionals and security audit professionals.

649 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Chuck Easttom is an internationally renowned computer security expert and trainer. He has been in the IT industry for over 18 years and training for over 10. He has conducted numerous computer security courses over the past decade, most notably for the Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force. Students in his classes often include network administrators, corporate chief security officers (CSO’s), federal agents, local law enforcement, military personal, and department of defense contractors. He also has a master’s degree in education as well as a master’s of business administration (specialized in applied computer science) and has been named to both Who’s Who in Education and Whose Who in Science and Technology. He holds over 28 industry certifications including prominent computer security certifications such as CHFI, CISSP, ISSAP, and CEH. In addition to his many certifications he is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and an EC Council certified instructor.

He was part of the teams that created the CompTIA Security+ certification test, as well as their Server+ and Linux+ certification test. He was also part of the CEH version 8 job task analysis team. Chuck also created the EC Councils CAST 615 cryptography course as well as their new Certified Encryption Specialist certification course.


He is the author of 15 computer science books including two computer security textbooks from Pearson publishing that are used at universities around the world. He is also the author of a book specifically on computer crime from Cengage publishing, and most recently a computer forensics textbook from Jones and Barlett publishing.

Chuck has been a speaker on various computer security related topics including the following: the Harvard Computer Society (topic the history of computer crime), Columba University ACM Chapter (topic the history of computer viruses), Takedown con (multiple topics all related to cryptography), and Hacker Halted (topic cryptography), and the Southern Methodist University Computer Science and Engineering research colloquium (topic organized computer crime and terrorism).

Reviews

[Rachel Bayles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very basic text for non-IT types to get an idea what goes on underneath the hood. At the very least, will frighten you into doing regular backups.

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid introduction to computer security basics covering topics ranging from hackers and frauds to security policies and computer forensics. This book is by no means comprehensive, but provides lots of very useful information to anyone looking for a start in computer security.

Each chapter ends with a series of self tests and exercises built to give the user further knowledge, and the book is full of links for further study and information. There are plenty of real world examples and best practices as well as baseline templates for security policies. A good start for anyone looking to begin learning about this field of study.