Risk Assessment Necessary Evil

This week I have been learning about doing risk assessment in order to inform how much companies would actually lose if the company lost equipment or data. I learned it is tough in coming up with all that could go wrong and with what is of value within a company that I need to take into account.

The hardest part of the "assessment" is assigning a numerical value. You have to think of the employee worth, and the amount of time that goes into the assessment. You also have to think of the time that it takes to replace the data and information that may be compromised if a system fails.

Will you be able to cover quickly? Remember that the longer your system and network may be down the longer you will be not satisfying customers' needs. You have to be prepared. Make the necessary backups, images, have the necessary disks. Do you have extra computer parts in case your system blows up? Are the backup and recovery procedures written down and are the staff prepared on how to implement those procedures. These are the questions to ask.

Systems should be operational within an hour. If it is not then something is wrong with your recovery procedure. The quicker you can get back to work the better. I know there are some extreme instances where that will not be possible, but that also needs to be taken into account.

As always leave me a comment about anything I say, and remember stay secure out there.

Linux in a Nutshell 5th Edition Review

Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition By: Ellen Siever, Aaron Weber, Stephen Figgins, Robert Love, Arnold Robbins, et al. is a fantastic reference book for both newbies to Linux or system administrators that have 20+ years of experience. The book is published by O'Reilly Media, which is the leader in great and easy to read technical book. The book is a massive 944 pages. Two-thirds of which is commands to use with linux and a detail and examples of most if not all the options with that command. If you are reading a forum post and want to find the truth about what that command is doing to the system then use this book to find that out so you want be left with possible deleting your system. The list of commands are in alphabetical order so they are easy to thumb to the correct command. It is great to learn about the commands. I think adding the commands in this kind of list and format is the best thing about the book. I will use that section for years to come. 

Also if you want to know about how to set up different services or servers running Linux you can with this book also. You can learn about DNS/BIND, SSH, file sharing, networking and a lot more within the other chapters of the book. 

My only caution with this book is that it is for the person wanting to become proficient in the use of the command line. It is not for the typical user unless you love the command line. If you are a casual user then I would recommend an Ubuntu book by O'Reilly. There are no graphics in the book, so you will know the command line by the time you study and read this book. Also you cannot understand the command line unless you use it day in and day out.

I give this book 4 out of 5 Penguins just because I wished they would have given more examples and covered more administration topics and expanded on them. But it is still a wonderful book and reference tool. It will stay next to me and my computer.