Check Point NG aims to teach its readers how to install and set up VPN-1/FireWall-1 Next Generation, the latest version of the highly respected firewall software from Check Point. Its authors — all with significant network and security certifications — accomplish their objective: it seems likely that this book will travel with a lot of Check Point consultants and stand ready on the shelves of many organizations' network security specialists. The book has plenty of unadorned how-to procedures that get straight to the point, and enough background information to help you make good designs and troubleshoot problems. The Syngress style, which incorporates a carefully considered list of questions and answers at the end of each chapter, suits this subject well. It's easy to locate sections of interest or to scan straight through and accumulate knowledge.

Your security requirements are unique, of course, but the authors do a good job of explaining how to satisfy common requirements and implement variations upon them. For example, they show how to configure Network Address Translation (NAT) in a general way, then — in a Q&A section — show how to combine sequentially numbered networks into a single network object for easy administration of rules. This is documentation worth having.