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| The Tao of Network Security Monitoring: Beyond Intrusion Detection | 
| Author: Richard Bejtlich
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Category: Book
List Price: $64.99
Buy New: $37.60
You Save: $27.39 (42%)
Buy New/Used from $22.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  (20 reviews)
Sales Rank: 26864
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 832
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7 x 1.5
ISBN: 0321246772
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.8
UPC: 785342246773
EAN: 9780321246776
ASIN: 0321246772
Publication Date: July 22, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
One of a kind February 20, 2005
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book has everyting as it pertains to network security monitoring. If you read this book from cover-to-cover, then you can consider yourself prepared to deal with anything that comes at you. This book presents material that would normally take years to learn in an easy-to-follow format. This book is a must have for anyone who is serious about their job and wants to make the jump to becoming an expert.
Great book - covers topic in detail January 20, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a great book. With most geek books, I browse and grab what I need. With this one, I even read the apendices!
At first, the author's tone put me off. He spends the introductory chapters talking about the "Way" of Network Security Monitoring, (capitalized) and how it's much better than other approaches. It felt a little like, "My Burping Crane Kung-Fu will defeat your Shining Fist techniques!" I really didn't see much difference between what he was talking about and other approaches. I admit to being much newer to this discipline than the author, and he has an impressive appendix on the intellectual history of intrusion detection (uncapitalized). So it may be that the lessons he advocates have already been internalized; my exposure may have been to a field that has already moved up to his standard. But I have a hard time imagining that intrusion analysts have ever been satisfied with a single approach with no correlation. As I understand what he means by upper-case NSM, it's basically the efficient use of multiple techniques to detect intrusions. I can't see trying to argue the contrary position.
Ah, but then we get to the good stuff. He goes through the major types of indicators and the means of reviewing them. He covers the use of a number of important tools, but doesn't rehash what is better covered elsewhere. For example, he doesn't bother covering Snort, because there are plenty of books on Snort already. If you are reading the book, it's almost a certainty that you are familiar with Snort. Good call to skip over that. Instead, he covers some other tools that might be useful in the same area. He also refers to tons of other books. I made a lengthy wish-list based on his recommendations and they've been good. (He also reviews exhaustively here on Amazon). So this book is like the first stone in an avalanche- it triggers the acquisition of many other books.
The book provided many 'light bulb' moments. For example, he talks about giving up on source-based focus. In a world where a DDoS attack is currently using 23,000 separate bots, we may exhaust our resources tracking low-value drones. So focus on the targets they are after: light-bulb! In spite of my earlier resistance, I was soon going through it as eagerly as I did with the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels. It's fun to read such clear, authoritative writing.
One quibble - he trashes the SANS intrusion detection course, which I took and thought was terrific. He has taught the class, and considered the course material out of date. Maybe they have updated, but his book didn't contradict anything in the course as I took it 1.5 years ago.
Advanced Security teachings January 10, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm not sure why, but my first review of this book was not posted. However, I feel that this book definitely warrants a second attempt. The Tao of Network Security is a definite must have for anyone serious about the field of network security. While the book is heavily BSD biased, the tools illustrated throughout the book are free and can be compiled on just about any platform. The author draws from his years of experience as a network security analyst for the Air Force and work as a forensic analyst for various network security operations. The author goes through various scenarios demonstrating different techniques for Intrusion detection using Open Source tools. He introduces Squil, a very robust front-end for Snort that is designed with the Security Analyst in mind. The author brings forth some very interesting points of view based on experience in network security. While the book is rather large, somewhere over 700 pages including the appendices, I found that all the information in the book is worthwhile and relevant.
An excellent and comprehensive security book November 12, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Richard Bejtlich hits one out of the park with this terrific book. In one stroke, he moves the art and science of intrusion detection out of the little leagues and into the majors. If you've already run through articles and books with advice like "just load SNORT and start tuning", this book will shift you to an all-star level in which thousands of machines across enterprise networks can be monitored and protected.
Network security monitoring (NSM) is the discipline of collecting and interpreting detailed network traffic to find and foil attackers. Although it may seem like Intrusion Detection (and IDSs), the relationship between IDSs and NSM is like that between Bonzo the chimp and King Kong. Almost anybody could handle a chimp for a few hours - or you'd think so from watching the movies - but bringing King Kong into your neighborhood means you really have to know what you're doing. He'll take a lot of feeding and special care. On the other hand, he does much more than Bonzo can to protect your assets. Network security monitoring is the King Kong of intrusion detection techniques.
The author presents detailed information on a large variety of network traffic capture and analysis tools, techniques, and topologies. Nearly all are public domain and open source. The few exceptions are tools specialized for industry-dominating Cisco and its proprietary formats and protocols. A few hours on the Internet with this book in hand can give you just about all the tools needed to follow his examples and to build your own network security monitoring environment.
Basic network activity capture is addressed through packages like the fundamental libpcap libraries, and the tools Tcpdump, Tethereal, Ethereal, and Snort (in its packet-capture mode). Tools for converting, combining, and subsetting captured data receive equal attention, with working examples based on editcap, mergecap, tcpslice, the Berkeley packet filter (BPF) language, tcpflow, ngrep and others. GUI tools are touched on as well, including EtherApe and NetDude. For the more advanced topic of session data or "flow" capture (using the Cisco NetFlow data format), there are equally-detailed discussions of the Flow-Tools package, the Argus analysis tools, tcptrace, and others.
Statistical reporting and analysis gets a chapter, while alert processing (the classic IDS functions of Snort) get two, covering Bro, Prelude, and Sguil. (Although the book mentions Snort briefly, it assumes you have access to sufficient information to load and use Snort without assistance.) Much of the remainder of the book addresses the practical issues of installing, operating, and administering network security monitoring in the environment of an enterprise or Internet service provider.
It's refreshing that the software tools are not just mentioned, they are shown in operation in several scenarios each. The reader can see why they are important to the craft of network security monitoring, and can follow the examples on their own computer once the tools are installed. The author's style is not quite a tutorial, but it's easy to learn from him.
Most striking, perhaps, is the author's focus on completely professional installation and operation of this sensitive security function. He talks about network topologies and their effect on sensor placement. He provides alternative designs for the collection of data and for its analysis, usually on separate workstations. His stated experience is on large and very busy networks, so he addresses some difficult techniques (such as merging data from separate sensors to simulate a real-time data flow on a single machine) that are valuable and often mandatory in distributed enterprises. At the same time, his advice supports smaller networks and more limited security goals - you just have to pick and choose the items you need from the very large smorgasbord he presents.
So impressive is the technical detail, you could forgive it for being less than polished. But the writer is not just competent, he is entertaining and enjoyable to read. Between Bejtlich's skills and those of the editors, this book has no bizarre jumps of topic, no dead space, none of the clanging infelicities and groaners that haunt most of the technical books we read each month.
We should be clear about this book's audience: it is not an executive overview or a manager's guide. This is a manual for practitioners. It is pitched toward those who are comfortable purging a desktop machine and converting it into a single-purpose network sensor, those who can download source code and compile tools in multiple operating systems, those who will find it worthwhile to put their hands on and their hearts into a challenging and open-ended endeavor. But for those whom it suits, this will be an indispensable guide, the complete play-book of a fascinating new security specialty.
Awesome! November 5, 2004
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book rocks.
Bejtlich knows his stuff.
This is a great book that gives you tons of information that you won't find elsewhere.
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