Microsoft Windows Server 2003 PKI and Certificate Security [With CDROM]

by Brian Komar, Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft

Capitalize on the built-in security services in Windows Server 2003--and deliver your own robust, public key infrastructure (PKI) based solutions at a fraction of the cost and time. This in-depth... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735620210
• ISBN13: 9780735620216
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Length: 570 Pages
• Weight: 2.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 7.6" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Critical Resource

This set provides the "missing" instruction book for Server 2003. It is full of helps, hints, and workarounds, written by experts. I cannot imagine trying to maintain a Server 2003 network of any size without these books on your shelf.

Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit: Special Promotion Edition

Worth every penny. This is a massive collection of harder to find resources to help you in your job as a Windows Server 2003 Systems Administrator. Time saving tools, tips, scripts and other resources will make this purchase pay for itself. The included CD ROM has all the material plus additional books in ebook format, so you can take it with you as a ready reference. If you are studying MCSA/MCSE, this resource will help you understand the technology as well as provide you with better tools so that you can apply your skills more efficiently.

7 Individual Books ++

This bundled set of books contains just about everything it is possible to know about Windows Server 2003. Well, maybe not everything, but everything you can include in four thousand six hundred and fifty pages, yes, 4650 pages. In one slipcase, there are eight separate Microsoft manuals: Windows Internals (4th Edition) Windows Group Policy guide Windows Security Resource Kit (2nd Edition) Windows Server 2003 Performance Guide Windows Server 2003 Troubleshooting Guide Windows Registry Guide (2nd Edition) Windows Administrator's Automation Toolkit Windows Server 2003 Tools and Digital Resources (on CD) The CD contains more material than the rest of the books put together including (guaranteed to be true as it contains all of the manuals just listed in eBook form), More than 300 esential tools and utilities, And collections of Technical References on: Active Director Core Operating System Group Policy High Availability and Scalability Networking Collection Storage Technologies Windows Security It would be pointless to talk about the contents of each book here as they are already described under their individual titles. What you get in the bundle is: lower price than when purchased individually, extra material on the CD, and a cardboard slipcase to keep them in.

Great recource on how PKI can protect your network.

The Windows Server 2003 PKI and Certificate Security book will demystify PKI and certificate based security implementations for you. It will be very helpful to anyone who wants to learn what PKI can do for them or needs to know the specifics of how to implement it in their network for many uses from large networks to the small office. For many the thought of PKI, intimidates them. It should not as it really is not that difficult and can improve your security tremendously over traditional password based authentication and allow use of strong encryption and digital signing [proof of entity and integrity]. PKI is used to generate public and private keypairs for use in applications such as L2TP VPN, IPSEC, 802.1X authentication for wireless and wired networks, EFS file encryption, application signing, secure email encryption and signing, SSL website security, and smart cards. The book starts out with the basic concepts of PKI and the use of symmetric and asymmetric encrytpion and how they work together in PKI. It also explains digital signiatures - the other big use for certificates/private keys. It is written to be very understandable and the user or admin that has little understanding of PKI should have no problem learing the content and implemeting it. It does assume a basic understanding of Active Directory for Enterprise Certificate Authority use and also covers stand alone Certificate Authority. The book is also written so that you can refer to indivudual chapters such as the excellent chapter on how to implement 802.1X wireless if you do not need to know other material covered. PKI hierarchy is well covered whether you need to install a single CA, levels of CA's in your network, or even how to setup cross trusts to other CA hierarchies for full trust or conditional trust. If you have a Windows 2000 forest you can learn how to prep your forest schema for using a Windows 2003 Enterprise CA to take advantage of the new features such as autoenrollent for XP clients, configurable version 2 certificate templates, and archivable private keys for certificates used for encryption. Other important topics such as how to install a CA, configure a CAPolicy.inf file, use the certutil utility for many tasks, obtaining and implementing your own OID, role separation for those that need it, CRL and AIA publication points which is very important to the success of your PKI particularly if you are going to use an offline CA or for computers not on your network that use your certificates, configuring an offline CA and securing it, using HSM's - hardware security modules to protect the CA's private key, how to configure version 2 templates, configuring Group Policy for autoenrollment, configuring auditing, using Web Enrollment, how to backup and restore your CA and disaster recovery, how to publish certificates to Active Directory using certutil or PKIhealth tool, the concept of "chaining" to a trusted root CA [very important], and more. With the book comes a lot

Excellent value!

Very in depth - covers multiple subjects and has pleanty of examples and frameworks to help you with your migration. Also does an excellent job stressing the need to pilot and test - with one volume dedicated to setting up a test environment and using it to plan your deployment. If you are looking at Windows Server 2003, rolling out Active Directory or just managing a windows environment I highly recommend this referece set.