As I sat one morning working on some loose ends, my e-mail inbox signaled the arrival of some new message. Experience is the best teacher, and my experience told me this was a new worm or virus. The attachment was zipped, so I saved it to my Windows desktop and then FTPed it to one of my Linux boxes. Once there, I was safe to play with it the way a cat plays with a small mouse it caught. Such is the nature of security today. What I once loathed, I now treat as a daily component of handling information.
The security layer is not as static as other parts of the information infrastructure; it changes and evolves new countermeasures constantly. I don't try to keep up with everything, but I do pay attention. Two books have caught my attention, one because it is a cookbook for Linux security, a time saver, and the other because it covers other things I don't deal with, but having the knowledge helps one make connections. My third and more personal reason is I do not like being surprised. When you have enough bad experiences with security issues, you come to understand this.
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