Sybex Security+ 2008 book, FREE chapters!

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For those interested in taking the new S+ exam, Sybex have published a new book for it and have put the first 2 Chapters online for FREE!

Take a look, hope it helps.

 

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Unfortunately, the book is... well, to put it mildly, it's pretty bad. Our Security+ author has been complaining and complaining about it. When I went in to his office to assist him with a question, I got to see how bad it was, firsthand: the definition it has for implicit deny is actually the exact opposite of what it should be. Well, needless to say, we have ditched it as our reference and are now using other sources.

Sorry, Sybex... even though I wrote one of your books, I have to tell the truth... and I wouldn't recommend that Security+ book.

 

Glad to hear such honesty from a Sybex author! In that case I will be steering well clear of this book when I get around to S+...unless future revisions of it improve!

Out of interest, what would you recommend for S+ books?

 

Well after taking the advice of experienced members in here (and currently in the middle of reading the first chapter myself), I MUST recommend the Syngress Security+ Study Guide 2nd Edition. I also bought the LearnKey Security+ CBTs and to tell you the truth, they both go together topic by topic! I guess its because they approach it domain-by-domain, objective-by-objective as CompTIA lists them........rather than mixing several domains and objectives together in each chapter as Sybex is well-known for. In this way, I read a topic in the book and then watch the corresponding video and get a clear understanding! Depending on the topic, you may also want to re-read the the topic in the book after watching the video to better reinforce the understanding you got from the video. This method is working out just GREAT!!! Believe me!

 

For Security+, Syngress is definitely the way to go. However, they have not announced an update for the new 2008 Security+ exam. Their last update (2nd ed.) was VERY slow to hit the shelves, as it wasn't released until 2007.

 

Thanks for recommendations guys.

 

It seems nobody ever submitted an errata to Sybex on the second edition, where they mis-defined a Syn Flood by stating that the Attacker is sending Ack messages to the Server, instead of Syn messages. The error still exists in the current edition that just came out. I have just submitted the error with links to two authoritative articles http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4987 and http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1996-21.html. Their Errata form seems to go to customer service, so we shall see what comes of it.

 

One error down, about 700 more to go.

 

I am not sure I have seen any books that are totally error free. Proofreading is a lost art it seems.

But the worst case I ever came across was a sucky textbook in one of the classes for my AS in InfoSec, which was published by Thomson Course Technology (yup, same people behind Prometric!), which did not even have the OSI correct. The reason? They hired a guy with an English Master's and NO technical background whatsoever to write the book. Apparently his grammar was correct, but his ability to research the subject of his book was totally lacking. Thank heavens for the sake of future students they got someone else to write the next edition of the book!

I have submitted Errata to Sybex before, and they have usually been pretty good about posting it up on their website. I once tried to get Mike Myers to do something about his Network+ book that was written for the first version of that test. The test got considerably harder after the book was written, and I asked Myers if he was going to come out with another edition of his book to address the harder test, and he said no, not until they officially came out with a new test with new objectives.

 

No... but some are a WHOLE lot better - or a WHOLE lot worse - than others.

I had that happen at one place I worked... where non-technical people (or, people who thought they were technical) wrote and edited content. Unbeknownst to them, it was pretty bad... and although I tried to tell the powers-that-be, my message fell upon deaf ears. After all, they didn't know any better - it looked "good enough" to them!

Well, that's sorta out of Meyers' control, considering he's just the author, not the publisher.

The last time that same scenario happened, when CompTIA updated the Network+ 2005 exam in 2007 without releasing a brand new exam with new objectives, Meyers took the problem into his own hands, and provided (free of charge to owners of his 2005 Network+ books) a large bank of questions that covered the new "missing" content. Kudos to him for doing so!

 

Ah! Then he has mellowed! True enough about the publisher, but since Meyers is one of their "cash cows", you would think they would do more for him. Especially since this could mean more sales for them. But not having dealt with the publishing world, I do not know what constraints they put on authors. I am just glad that the tech books are generally not as expensive as most of my college books are! And they are generally better written too. So far, other than this glaring error I found, I have not seen that much that is in error, but I am only on Chapter 3. I do wish the chapters were a bit shorter and more focused on a given topic.

 

Nah, I doubt it. Those decisions are made by people who don't know how good or bad an author is... all they see is the cost to fix something they aren't convinced is broken.

That's good... our tech who is writing our Security+ product said it was nigh unusable, but I didn't get a lot of details from him. I figured when I found two back-to-back errors myself, that he was correct in his assessment. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between.