As the name implies, this is a collection of writings on the various uses of virtualization in the context of computer security. And while it does provide a decent amount of information to get you started using virtualization in the various areas of computer security discussed, it does a poor job of exploring the various options available to the security practitioner. Furthermore, while the book description claims to cover all major and widely deployed virtualization products, it makes only brief mention of XEN on page 57, where it discusses the caveats of paravirtualization, and it is never touched upon again. Microsoft Hyper-V is given the same treatment, appearing only once on pages 153-154 where it talks about limiting network traffic from virtual machines. This is disappointing when it the book states it covers VMware, XEN, and Microsoft Hyper-V, then only mentions XEN and Hyper-V briefly and in no real detail.



Of course, that is not to say that this book is not valuable, because it is a useful resource if you wish to use virtualization for security tasks such as research or investigations, and it discusses in good detail some of the caveats of using virtualization for those tasks, especially in malware investigation. There are also some great real-world examples of what tools to use and how to use them for various tasks. But, the book concentrates nearly its entire focus on using VMWare, and if you are interested in using other tools like XEN, as I am, you will be disappointed. Some of the details covered in the book about virtualization in general will be helpful with running XEN virtualization for security, but you will need to look at other resources for the details on how to get that running and how to use it, because this book simply does not address it. The book also lacks a bit of cohesion, since it is the collected and edited works of several disparate authors. I could forgive the cohesion issue if it existed on its own, because it is to be expected with this type of book, but the cost of the book coupled with the lack of details on products outside of the VMware family is disappointing enough to give it only three stars.

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