The summary

1. Paranoia and vigilance are good characteristics for system administrators!
   
   
2. All of the security tools in the world will not replace a good knowledge of Linux/Unix, system administration and networking, but the tools are a useful aid.
   
   
3. Use a Linux distribution that has a serious committment to providing a secure Linux system as the default installation.
   
   
4. At a minimum, subscribe to the linux-alert mailing list and your distribution's announcement mailing list so that you can be aware of potential security holes and fixes.
   
   

This talk has not covered some of the more advanced security issues. Once you have a good understanding of the basics, you may wish to learn more about such issues as:

• The security problems with NFS
  
  
• X-Windows client/server security
  
  
• Encrypted tunnelling
  
  
• kerberos for authenticated and encrypted file access
  
  
• CGI security
  
  
• SSL (eg. web authentication)
  
  
• Packet sniffing and how to combat it
  
  
• Firewalls
  
  
• Security for network packages like SAMBA and netatalk
  
  
• Coding problems: eg. buffer overflows and race conditions