Book Review : Cisco CSA by Chad Sullivan - 2005

As an endpoint protection solution, Cisco Security agent was a timely product, when it was released 2003, for being one of the industry’s first behavior based host protection solution and thus offering some hope of protection against the widely feared zero-day attack scenario. While the product is considered a great tool, its proper deployment in an enterprise is non-trivial. Hence the value of a book like Cisco Security Agent : Prevent security breaches by protecting endpoint systems with Cisco Security Agent(CSA) , the Cisco host Intrusion Prevention System.

While the books organization is not quit elegant (it leaves the planning and implementation process to the last part while address advanced concepts earlier on), its comprehensive content on the subject makes it a useful book all the same. The seven part book makes the case for Cisco Security Agent (or any endpoint security solution for that matter) in the first part, addresses the CSA architecture in the second and describes the agent installation as well as issues with the local agent in the third. Monitoring and reporting was handled in fourth part while the fifth part addresses CSA analysis in deployment. The author developed policies, implementation and CSA maintenance in part six while the last part (appendixes) addresses integration with other Cisco technologies.

Chad’s narrative while pedestrian provides ample guidance and example to appeal to an enterprise security administrator in a concise manner thereby compressing what could potentially have been a 1000 page manual into a less than 450 pages. Also the overall style of the presentation bellies Chad’s breadth of experience as a network security subject matter expert.

Given the state of enterprise information systems security today, a typical enterprise will need a combination of tools to achieve a secure pasture and this book by Chad Sullivan as well as the Cisco NAC appliance book he helped co-write are very useful guides for organizations planning to develop or deploy a robust and holistic end-point control solutions. While the book is dated (2005), I’ll still recommend it as a buy (even though I expect an update in the near future).