The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security: Certification Study Guide [Paperback]

If you're a techno-geek, it's easy to find material on how to secure your computing environment. It's considerably more difficult to find readable and understandable material that you can give to Uncle Joe to prevent him from becoming the latest spam zombie. A good entry into this niche is the book The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security by Andrew Conry-Murray and Vincent Weafer.

Content: Understanding Internet Risk; Preventing Identity Theft; Firewalls; Getting Rid of Unwanted Guests, Part 1 - Viruses and Worms; Getting Rid of Unwanted Guests, Part 2 - Spyware, Adware, and Trojan Horses; Just Say No To Spam; Securing Windows; Keeping Your Family Safe Online; Wireless and VoIP Security; Privacy and the Internet; Conclusion; Index

This book doesn't attempt to "entertain" the reader or dazzle them with funny graphics or drawings. It's just solid material on internet security presented in a clear and concise manner. The target is for nontechnical Windows users, and in my opinion the authors pretty much nail it. The heavy duty jargon is either avoided or explained clearly, and nearly any internet user with a small amount of interest should be able to use this book. Each chapter ends with a Checklist that covers the things you need to do (or things you shouldn't do) in order to enhance your security. Even if you can't get Uncle Joe to read the entire chapter, he can get the gist of the useful info in a short page or two. I'd prefer they understand *why* they are doing something, but I'll take whatever I can get with some people...

If you're the target audience for this book, it's a definite recommended purchase and read. And if you're a techno-geek who's tired of incessantly cleaning spyware and viruses off the neighbor's computer, buy them a copy of this book. It's a relatively cheap way to get your life back...

Windows is today by far the most popular platform for workstation and

desktop computers. However, it has also proven to be the most susceptible

to a wide variety of attacks, many of which being of a distributed

(mass-spreading) nature.

Regardless of the important steps that Microsoft has taken to provide a

sufficient out-of-the box level of security, a default Windows

installation remains far from secure and not likely to survive for

long against the various hazards that access to the Internet hides. Truth

is that few users are even aware of these hazards -until it is too late-, much less being able to make an educated choice among all these protective software titles with fancy names out there.

This is where Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security comes to the rescue,

offering a consistent and easy to comprehend source of information to both

the completely novice users and those with limited knowledge in the

ways of computer security. Without going into unnecessary technical

details, it explains all that a user needs to know to protect his

privacy in windows environments.

For those that do not know, Symantec has been established as one of the

leading companies in the field of computer security globally, offering it's own

quality software solutions -with best examples the Norton Anti-Virus and

Internet Security suite. However this book is in no way written to promote

or focus to any specific software. It aims to educate the reader so that

he is able to make his own sensible choices of security-related software

and it definitely succeeds in it...

Symantec's Guide to Home Internet Security is of the few security-related

books that demand no experience or previous knowledge. In it's about 200

pages, it manages to teach with illustrative examples, tables and images

everything from the ground, without becoming tiresome or confusing to the

reader at any point.

The material covered is well distributed into 10 chapters. More

specifically:

Chapter 1 is a short introduction to the main types of Internet

risks. It shows how the Internet is full of cunning/malicious users that

will do anything to take advantage of every valuable bit of information

that we exchange.

Chapter 2 covers the most well-established techniques of

identity-stealing. It teaches you important methods to prevent them and

react in the event of identity theft.

Chapter 3 explains the logic behind firewalls, in which cases they

can protect us and how they can be used to effectively do so.

Chapters 4 and 5 cover the large subject of Malware (malicious

software). You will learn in what ways Viruses, Worms, Spyware, Adware and

Trojan horses can harm your system, how you can minimize the possibility

of being infected, in what ways you can utilize protective

software as a measure of prevention and restoration and what are the

criteria according to which you should choose those software products.

Chapter 6 continues with the subject of SPAM messages, whether they

just carry annoying advertisements or act as means of Information Phising

and Social Engineering techniques. This chapter will teach you a great deal of these techniques, how to filter out SPAM messages and determine the validity of any potentially harmful message.

Chapter 7 focuses generally on good practices for keeping your

Windows system in good health.

Chapter 8 is dedicated in presenting methods for protecting other

members of your family/environment that will use your computer with

possibly less knowledge about security or underage from unwanted content.

Windows features and extra tools for filtering access to unwanted content

are described, along with recommendations for optimum implementation.

Chapter 9 speaks about security in Wireless/Portable devices and

VoIP applications. Common usage mistakes are pointed with regard to the

severity of their potential exploitation.

Finally, Chapter 10 introduces the basic principles of

cryptography, it's most widely used applications and possible ways that we

can take advantage of it to protect our privacy.

Conclusion: If you are not familiar at all with security or have your doubts in some

things, this book can literally save you! The material covered is absolutely necessary for the survival of any windows station connected to the Internet and reading Symantec's Guide to Home Internet Security is probably the easiest way to learn it.

Symantec offers a general purpose guide to the dangers of malware, directed at a non technical reader, who might have a home computer to maintain. It shows how you might get email from anywhere in the world, containing spam or bogus offers, like "dates" with attractive women, or money offers from relatives of dead dictators are common come-ons.

The book warns against other perils. For instance, the https connection is used to prevent a third party listening in on your communication with a website. Many financial websites use this, when you are presenting a password. But any website can use https. Even a bogus one. Sometimes the latter might use it, in part to fool people who think that https per se confers validation of that website.

Phishing is correctly described as the most damaging of current Internet frauds. The book outlines characteristics of many phishing messages, and how they often [mis-]direct you to a fradulent site ("pharm"). However, the only solution offered by the text is that the reader should beware of such messages and should not click on links in any that she believes to be phishing. (Let alone enter personal data in a page linked to by the message.) There is no technical answer suggested to defeat phishing. Basically, the reader is on her own. Phishing is still a relatively new phenomenon, at least as compared to spam.

In contrast, the book goes into a bundle of antispam techniques, such as blacklists, whitelists, signatures, Bayesians and reputation filtering.