Network Security Assessment

Book excerpt: How secure is your network? The best way to find out is to attack it. Network Security Assessment provides you with the tricks and tools professional security consultants use to identify and assess risks in Internet-based networks-the same penetration testing model they use to secure government, military, and commercial networks. With this book, you can adopt, refine, and reuse this testing model to design and deploy networks that are hardened and immune from attack. Network Security Assessment demonstrates how a determined attacker scours Internet-based networks in search of vulnerable components, from the network to the application level. This new edition is up-to-date on the latest hacking techniques, but rather than focus on individual issues, it looks at the bigger picture by grouping and analyzing threats at a high-level. By grouping threats in this way, you learn to create defensive strategies against entire attack categories, providing protection now and into the future. Network Security Assessment helps you assess: Web services, including Microsoft IIS, Apache, Tomcat, and subsystems such as OpenSSL, Microsoft FrontPage, and Outlook Web Access (OWA) Web application technologies, including ASP, JSP, PHP, middleware, and backend databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Windows networking components, including RPC, NetBIOS, and CIFS services SMTP, POP3, and IMAP email services IP services that provide secure inbound network access, including IPsec, Microsoft PPTP, and SSL VPNs Unix RPC services on Linux, Solaris, IRIX, and other platforms Various types of application-level vulnerabilities that hacker tools and scripts exploit Assessment is the first step any organization should take to start managing information risks correctly. With techniques to identify and assess risks in line with CESG CHECK and NSA IAM government standards, Network Security Assessment gives you a precise method to do just that.