C# Data Security: Practical. Net Cryptography

Rating:
Summary: Super!
Review: Simply a great book about security, certificates, encryption, signing, and more.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Very very good book about security in the .NET platform.
highly recomanded

Rating:
Summary: An essential guide to secure .NET applications
Review: What can I say about this book? To start with I have to give praise to author of the first chapter. As an introduction in various security concepts such as Integrity, Authentication and Authorization, it is so simple that even a manager could understand it, but the wealth of knowledge available means that every developer picking up this book should be reading this chapter in-depth.

Moving on chapters 2, 3 and 4 provide a real insight into how cryptography works within in the .NET framework. These chapters not only present invaluable information on how to use the .NET cryptography classes, but also how they are often misused - practical information for any developer.

The rest of the book is jam packed with valuable information on a whole range of topics from SSL and TLS right through to certificates and CAPICOM.

For anyone developing XML based applications there is an in-depth look at the use of XML Signatures and the various ways it can be applied within an application. If you want to transmit verifiable XML data then this provides a useful insight.

I really liked the list of best and worst practises included in chapter 7, which introduced some long term worth for this title. If you are developing security for an application it is a trivial exercise to check you implementation against the list of best and worst practises.

Perhaps the most standout part of this book is chapter 8 which brings together all of the topics of the book to build a full web service application that simulates a virtual hard drive. This application gives a real-world understanding of how various different security techniques and concepts can be brought together.

What I really liked about this book was that I wasn't a regurgitation of the MSDN documentation. All the information is presented in ways which you can, and probably will, use in day-to-day development.

My only criticism of this book is that I felt that the concept of key stores could have been better explained, much earlier in the book. As it was I had to re-read certain sections to better understand them.