Review by Billy Barron

"Intranet Security: Stories from the Trenches" by Linda McCarthy (Prentice Hall; ISBN 0-13-894759-7) is a book that technical people will find lacking in useful details. It may be useful for management to better understand the risks and common problems that their organization may have.

The worst part of this book is the constant "I'm so wonderful" attitude of the author. In some of her stories, it seems like that she picks some people as being terrible and others as just needing to learn a little based on her personal feelings. Also, it seems like she is trying to drum up customers for her line of work, security consulting.

If you are a manager and am unsure of how secure your computer systems really are, this book may help. Otherwise, this is a book to avoid.