William Stallings
1 For folks serious about learning network security
I purchased this book as part of the required reading for an Information Security class at UCLA. From the start the book was full of very technical and detailed information. Having little practical network experience, my first reading focused on grasping the low-hanging fruit. As I read the book a second and third time I picked up some serious knowledge. It seemed like everytime I re-read a chapter there was more there to glean. I'm now studying for the CISSP and CISA. My initial cold self-assessments returned scores in the 80%-100% range. That's without CISSP/CISA-specific studying. I attribute most of that knowledge to this book. This was money well spent!
2 Quick & Dirty
This book appears to be a shorter, more concise version of Stallings' "Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice." It has a much shorter, and therefore less complete treatment of security concepts in general and specifically cryptography. It might be good for a focused introductory course on network-level security, but there's not much there about application-level security. Overall, I found it a little terse. I like Stallings' books on networks and computer architecture better.
3 Pretty good book for serious beginners
Pretty good starting book for serious beginners in the network security area. Give you an in-depth overview of cryptography (part 1) and network security (part 2). The system security (part 3) is kind of weak. Most of the discussion are rather theoretic than practical, so you need another more practical book as companion. Anyway, understanding the contents of the book will lay a solid foundation for further exploring in the network security. BTW, if you hate math, this won't be a book for you!
4 no title
this book is very good for beginners in network security area.
