Reviews and Blurbs
Review by Anton Chuvakin, Ph.D., a security professional and co-author of Security Warrior from O'Reilly, a superb book for advanced users, admins, programmers and security researchers.
Blurb: Computer Security for the Home and Small Office "offers an amazing breadth of coverage, starting from simple Linux and Windows security tips all the way to malware (such as spyware, viruses and worms), the basics of security risk analysis, privacy abuses, erasing traces of activity from computers, and even 'cyberterrorism.' I also liked how well the author presented encryption: usually a difficult subject for security novices."
--Anton Chuvakin
Review by Tony Bradley, CISSP, a computer and network security professional and columnist for About.com.
Blurb: "One thing this book does that is admirable is that it goes beyond simple security and recommends open source and alternative solutions -- even debating the use of Linux over Windows, giving the user an in-depth look at their options. Home users need this information and I recommend they check this book out."
--Tony Bradley
Criticisms
From a largely positive (4 out of 5 star) review on Amazon.com by an anonymous reader:
"One downside to this book is the reader is often given only the minimum explanation on subjects of interest, often leaving more questions in the reader's head than were present before the subject was discussed. This is likely due to page constraints inherent in covering such a broad topic and basically puts it in the reader's hands to seek out more information."
Mea culpa. The reader cites the network monitoring tool Netstat as an example of a topic on which he would have liked more detail. I gave it nine pages and eight screen shots, which I felt was adequate to teach the basics of what it does and how it can be used to advantage. The book is already rather hefty at over 400 pages, but I needed to avoid creating some overwhelming tome that would be intimidating to beginners. It was necessary to use my judgment about the level of detail needed to put readers firmly on the path to taking control of their systems. For example, I gave the personal encryption programs PGP and GPG twenty-five pages with twelve screen shots, because these programs are complicated and this high level of detail is necessary just to get comfortable with the basics. I felt that Netstat is fairly easy to grasp, and that I got the balance right in explaining it. I'm grateful to the reader for voicing his criticism; this will help make the next edition better, and I encourage all readers to let me know what they would like to see more (and less) of in future editions. I will post them here as I receive or find them.
--tcg