What are some topics you'd like to see covered in an 'Introduction to Network Security' book?

Question

I'm trying to put together a list of topics in Network Security and prioritize them accordingly. A little background on the book - we are trying to gear the text towards college students, as an introduction to security, and toward IT professionals who have recently been tasked with securing a network.

The idea is to create a book that covers the most vital and important parts of securing a network with no assumptions. So, if you were a novice student interested in network security OR an IT professional who needed a crash course on network security, what topics do you feel would be of the upmost importance in such a text?

Answer 1

Some thoughts (by no means complete; also not necessarily in the best order):

• authentication, authorization, and encryption basics
• management of authentication and authorization information (e.g., Active Directory)
• management of privileges ; delegation models for authorization
• firewalls
• network analysis tools (e.g., packet analyzers)
• installation of security defenses in hardware (e.g., certificates)
• some additional encryption topics:
  • symmetric/asymmetric encryption
  • digital signing
• threats:
  • basics of malware, spyware, viruses and general defense management
  • basic injection issues (e.g., SQL injection)
  • intro to OWASP
  • users
• recent Internet models (OAuth)
• case studies in network security failures
  • past cases where worms, viruses, injections, etc have disabled organizations -- what lessons can be learned from them

Answer 2

Here's my own list of topics that I see people keep failing at, frequently:

• How to use crypto
• When NOT to use crypto
• Authentication != Authorization
• Not understanding TCP/IP suite, especially the layering, fragmentation and reassembly
• How to do security not compliance, and how to deal when they're at odds
• Understanding where do problems come from, and what do mitigations really do
• Compromising security for the sake of comfort/ignorance (e.g. installing full Xorg and desktop managers so they can add a user)
• Protocol analysis (why is MD4 fine by itself, but WEP is horribly broken despite being built on top of MD4)
• Distinguishing between different classes of attacks and what mechanism is being faulty/misused
• Understanding the difference between bad design and bad implementation, and the consequences of both
• Understanding various security mechanisms and what they really try to prevent (e.g. by now firewalls are a mindless requirement, but can most people name what type of security problem they solve?)
• Debugging network problems--localizing the problem to software/hardware, your machine vs other machines vs network
• Learning the difference between a solution, a mitigation, and an obscure obstacle

Answer 3

Check out the curriculum's for certifications such as the C|EH, GPEN (and other GIAC certs), CISSP, OSCP, and many others. These are all geared towards defending networks and should be a good starting point for your book.