The entire first half of this book, and even partial sections of the second half appear to be more geared towards system administration (which I don't really have any interest in). With that said, I don't feel that I have much authority to criticize this book aside from the fact that overall it's not a very "fun" book to read (I did skim through a couple chapters), but rather one of the more serious ones.

On the other hand there were several parts I found extremely interesting, such as topics on encryption and hashing, using hashing to verify integrity of files, creating application level user roles, as well as the chapter on XSS (cross site scripting). The authors are without any doubt very paranoid and security conscious individuals; several discussions I believe could even easily be considered a little too paranoid.

As opposed to a how-to/reference guide, the book in my mind is lot more "general information" which gives a good solid background on topics one might be interested in, plenty of web addresses to further educate yourself, theoretical approach's and what not. Therefore, and overall I feel this book was written specifically for sysadmins and/or anyone up for some good discussion on security. If you're more the type to follow along with in-depth examples, or expand upon existing code, then this book probably won't interest you.

The pre-mentioned topics of interest made it worth it for me. No regrets.

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