Who this book is for

This book is meant for anyone tasked with administering network infrastructure of almost any kind. If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of how things work in your network, this book is for you! You'll also find our discussion interesting if you are often left wondering how you will deliver the various services on your network that your organization needs, but might not have the budget to pay for commercial products. We'll cover how each of the Linux services we discuss works, as well as how you might configure them in a typical environment.

Finally, if you are concerned with how attackers view your network assets, you'll find lots to interest you! We discuss how attackers and malware commonly attack various services on your network, and how to defend those services.

Since our focus in this book is on Linux, you'll find that the budget for both deploying and defending the services we cover is measured more in your enthusiasm and time for learning new and interesting things, rather than in dollars and cents!