Since 1999, Hacking Exposed has been educating many people to the ease with which computer networks and systems are broken into. Thanks in part to this effort, people worldwide are beginning to understand the necessity for firewalls, secure operating system configuration, vendor patch maintenance, and many other previously arcane fundamentals of information system security.

Unfortunately, the rapid evolution brought about by the Internet has already pushed the goalposts far upfield. As technology continues to rapidly advance, system owners need to continually update the countermeasures that they deploy to defeat the ever-escalating onslaught of malicious activity marauding across public and private networks today.

Meeting the Windows Security Challenge
Hacking Exposed: Windows shows you how to meet this challenge with the two-pronged approach adapted from the original Hacking Exposed, now in its fifth edition.

First, we catalog the numerous exploits your Windows deployment will face and explain how they work in excruciating detail. How do we know these are the greatest threats? Because we are hired by the world's largest companies to break into their Windows infrastructures, and we use them on a daily basis to do our jobs.

Once we have your attention by showing you the damage that can be done, we tell you how to prevent each and every attack. Deploying Microsoft products without understanding the information in this book is roughly equivalent to driving a car without seatbelts - down a slippery road, over a monstrous chasm, with no brakes, and the throttle jammed on full.

The HE Commitment
Hacking Exposed: Windows - and this Website - are dedicated to bringing your Windows systems' security back under control. There are a lot of late nights and worn-out keyboards that went into this book, and we sincerely hope that all of our research and writing translates to tremendous time savings for those of you responsible for securing Microsoft technologies. Don't panic - start turning the pages and take great solace that when the next big Microsoft security calamity hits the front page, you won't even bat an eye.

-- The Authors & Contributors