Practical Unix & Internet Security is one of the most comprehensive books on Information Security. While not touted as a study-guide for security certifications per se, one should be able to pass an exam like the CISSP if they know the information in this book. Considered by many to be the "Bible" of Information Security, this update was desperately needed.

The 2nd Edition of this book was as good and as valuable as the first edition. Combined, the first two editions have sold a quarter million copies!The problem is that computers, networks and the Internet change rapidly. Information that was current in 2000 or even 2001 can be meaningless in 2003. New vulnerabilities, techniques and hacker tools are introduced weekly. While the core concepts of Information Security essentially stay the same, the 2nd Edition had lost some of its value due to being dated.

Practical Unix & Internet Security - 3rd Edition is close to 1000 pages of information. Some of the updates include new information on LDAP, SMB / Samba, wireless and PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules). The book is created from a Unix perspective- focusing on the Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Linux operating systems. The core information is still valuable for administrators of Windows machines as well though. Since most of the Internet and much of the web servers of the world run on Unix / Linux platforms it is an integral part of using a computer on the Internet.

To give you an idea of what the book entails, here is a listing of the chapter titles