First off, a little about me to give this review context. I have been working in the industry as a *nix administrator with a heavy concentration on Sun products for the last 12 years. For the last year and a half, I have been working on my organization's Solaris 10 baseline as one of the lead designers and the technical security architect for the baseline. Basically that means I have spent the last 18 months or so looking into security issues and building a common baseline that meets our needs within the Solaris 10 paradigm.

I took and passed the exam a few days ago using this book as a resource and offer the following observations about it:

When I purchase a book for certification preparation, I expect two things. First I expect it to be relevant to the exam in question, and second I expect it to have a life after the exam as a desk reference. The most excellent Calkins book for Solaris 10 System Administration is a great example of what I am talking about.

This book does neither of those things. The first half is a primer on the basic principles of IT security. As such, it does a passable job. That's half of the book spent on information that is easily obtainable from any number of sources.

The second half, which is semi-technical in nature, covers a portion of the testable topics, leaving out some of the most important security features introduced in Solaris 10. What is covered is done from the pre-Solaris 10 perspective and is largely useless for someone attempting to learn practical Solaris 10 security. The book would be much better advertised if it removed Solaris 10 from the title. Although I don't think the material that is covered is done on enough of a technical basis for Solaris 9 security certification either.

Basically if you are looking for a Solaris 9 security primer, that explains the overall concept of some of the Solaris 9 OS security features, this may be an acceptable book.

The only reason I passed the exam is because I have been working on security related projects on Solaris 10 for some time. Nothing beats practical experience. If you are looking for technical information about Solaris 10 security features, check out Glenn Brunette's web blog and presentations which are all locatable via google. He has some great work out there in the public domain talking about this subject.