Impacta Blog

Assessing Network Security book by Kevin Lam, et al.

Hey everyone, I got several emails recently (in response to this blog posting) regarding how you can get a hold of a copy of Assessing Network Security (ISBN: 9780735620339, Microsoft Press) that myself, David LeBlanc and Ben Smith co-authored a few years back in 2004. 

• Amazon. Amazon.com has some pretty great reviews of it, however I don’t think you can order it directly from Amazon.com anymore.  They provide some links to other resellers though.
• Barnes and Noble. Says it’s out of stock, and also provide some links to resellers.
• Bookpool.  Bookpool.com also says it’s out of stock as well.

Alright what now?  Here’s a little tip for getting this book if your company already has an account with Microsoft.  Ask your Microsoft account manager to order a couple copies for you internally via a tool called ‘msmarket’ (msmarket is called out publicly here on Microsoft.com, so I am not letting out some big internal secret). 

If you can get your hands on a copy, I hope you really enjoy it.  David, Ben and myself set out to write a book that was not your typical ‘hacking book’ based on exploits de jour and hacking tools, but rather on concepts, strategies and processes that are don’t expire or become irrelevant over time. While it may not be as exciting as other books on the ”lastest MS08-067 staging shellcode, exploit this, exploit that,” I think it definitely helped our readers tackle the problem of security in a more systematic, objective and sustainable way  in the long run. Looks like some of the reviewers on Amazon.com understood this vision of ours.

“The best pentesting book I’ve seen”

“An Excellent First Book on Pen Testing”

Anyways, I’ve got the writing bug again, so who knows I might get around to writing a second edition or another book one of these days. 

–Kevin