Archive for September, 2007
All over the world, Windows gurus have been working overtime to uncover the hottest new Windows Vista tips, tricks, and tweaks. Now, J. Peter Bruzzese has collected all their best discoveries in one place: Tricks of the Microsoft® Windows VistaTM Masters! Bruzzese has interviewed top Windows professionals, instructors, and power users; scoured the Web (so you won’t have to); and rigorously tested every single tip. Only the most valuable tips tecnhiques and tips made the cut to improve your efficiency, take total control of your digital media and data; use Internet Explorer 7, Windows Mail, and Calendar; configure Windows Defender and Firewall; avoid, troubleshoot, and fix problems; make Windows Vista work better, faster, smarter, safer, and more fun too!
In this book, two senior members of Microsoft’s Security Business and Technology Unit present a complete “Defense in Depth” model for protecting any Windows network—no matter how large or complex. Drawing on their work with hundreds of enterprise customers, they systematically address all three elements of a successful security program: people, processes, and technology.
Unlike security books that focus on individual attacks and countermeasures, this book shows how to address the problem holistically and in its entirety. Through hands-on examples and practical case studies, you will learn how to integrate multiple defenses—deterring attacks, delaying them, and increasing the cost to the attacker. Coverage includes
* Improving security from the top of the network stack to the bottom
* Understanding what you need to do right away and what can wait
* Avoiding “pseudo-solutions” that offer a false sense of security
* Developing effective security policies—and educating those pesky users
* Beefing up your first line of defense: physical and perimeter security
* Modeling threats and identifying security dependencies
* Preventing rogue access from inside the network
* Systematically hardening Windows servers and clients
* Protecting client applications, server applications, and Web services
* Addressing the unique challenges of small business network security
The thing about Windows XP Professional is, users love it. It has a slick interface and it behaves far more intelligently and predictably than some of its predecessors. The new system of software registration aside, Windows XP surely is the most highly acclaimed Microsoft operating system since Windows 95. Which means you–you being the system administrator, or organizational computing guru by some other title–have to know how to make it go and how to make the changes that users and bosses will inevitably require. Configuring and Troubleshooting Windows XP Professional provides you with the procedures you need to get jobs done in a hurry, plus a considerable amount of background information that will help you comprehend what’s really going on. The authors’ work can’t be called all-encompassingly deep, but it is solid and well researched, and will answer most administrators’ questions most of the time.
The formula used here is pretty standard, and generally effective. The writer will open his discussion of a subject–virtual private networks (VPNs), say, or performance logging–with some background information, then proceed to relate one or more procedures (stepped, but not too lavishly illustrated). Concluding prose explains variations upon the procedure, or how the subject at hand interacts with some other Windows feature. One particularly nice feature of this book (and of others in this series): The question-and-answer pages at the end of each chapter. These aren’t put in as afterthoughts and are a good way to gain valuable nuggets of knowledge about Windows XP
