Overview of the Book’s Contents

We would like to introduce this book from a 50,000-foot view. The first two chapters, “Introduction to Assessing Network Vulnerabilities” and “Foundations and Principles of Security,” serve as a foundation for later chapters. These chapters introduce basic concepts of everything we will talk about throughout the book. Chapter 3, “Why Risk Assessment,” and Chapter 4, “Risk Assessment Methodologies,” deal specifically with risk. We examine risk terminology, quantitative risk assessment, qualitative risk assessment, and how risk is analyzed in real life.

Chapters 5 through 10 are designed to guide you through the security assessment process. Chapter 5, “Scoping the Project,” presents a discussion of the scoping phase. Topics such as the forces driving the assessment are introduced. Chapter 6, “Understanding the Attacker,” discusses who the real threat is. Both inside and outside attacks typically follow a given pattern. These stages of attack are discussed, as are ways to reduce the threat. If the assessment you are performing is being driven because of an attack, you’ll find this a particularly valuable chapter.

Chapter 7, “Performing the Assessment,” introduces the activities performed during the actual assessment. This might be only a policy review or may involve extensive hands-on testing. If hands-on testing is required, you will need a variety of tools, which are discussed in Chapter 8, “Tools Used for Assessments and Evaluations.” Chapter 9, “Preparing the Final Report,” introduces you to the report-writing phase. Everything you have done must be documented, and this chapter discusses ways to write a successful report. Finally, Chapter 10, “Post-Assessment Activities,” describes what happens next. Post-assessment activities typically involve change. So this chapter delves into the topics of policy change, hardware implementation, and user training.

We have also outfitted the book with five appendixes. Here we provide security assessment resources, sample forms, and information on how to deal with outside consultants should you feel the need to outsource part of this process. Performing a security assessment is a challenging journey, and we hope that our approach to guarding your IT infrastructure makes your path more comfortable.