Proposal regarding security chapter

[Tillman Hodgson]

On Sat, Nov 20, 2004 at 03:35:49AM +0100, Max Laier wrote:
> On Friday 19 November 2004 21:33, Tillman Hodgson wrote:
> >
> > Nope, I agree with you. I was proposing to have a network and a host
> > (or local, which Tom suggested for a name) chapter. Firewalling
> > would be in the network chapter, MAC would be in the local chapter.
> > This is now my second-best ideal, though, after the new Section V
> > idea.
> 
> MAC is not strictly local or host, it has it's fingers in the netstack
> as well.

True enough. The Section V idea seems to manage this by avoiding the
issue. I often find that good solutions don't solve a problem, they make
it no longer relevent ;-)

> Since MAC is a complete system to look at security I think it's good
> to keep all documentation regarding it in one chapter under the TBD
> Security top level chapter. The same is true for Firewalls.  Though a
> firewall *is* a vital part of "III. System Administration" as well as
> "IV. Network Communication" the firewall itself is as system to serve
> on purpose: "V. Security".
> 
> I strongly support your point that security is an important topic.
> Hence, it should be really easy for new and especially advanced users
> to find the information that relates to security. Moreover, it should
> be easy to go to a specific subtopic within the security scope - such
> as Firewalls->PF ;) or MAC->Biba. It's not effective to go through
> several pages just to find these information.

I think you're agreeing with me, but I'm not sure ;-)

Currently we have:

III System Administration -> Security -> MAC -> Biba
III System Administration -> Security -> Firewalls -> PF
III System Administration -> Security -> Kerberos5

(I'm the Kerberos guy, so I used that as one of the examples ... I have
selfish motives too, yanno ;-)).

The proposal is to turn this into this:

V System Administration -> MAC -> Biba
V System Administration -> Firewalls -> PF
V System Administration -> Kerberos5

Basically putting all of the security topics on equal footing. This
highlights the importance of security, makes individual topics easier to
find (and less "deep" in level), 

I think that you're saying the same thing but I figured it was
worthwhile to spell it out explicitly just in case I'm not the only one
who was unclear.

-T


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