RTFM....The BOOK

I said before that Read The F*****G Manual was an important part of the basics. Well two people in the industry with far more chops than me took that to heart and wrote it down. Ben Clark wrote and published the Red Team Field Manual. (amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Rtfm-Red-Team-Field-Manual/dp/1494295504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415380905&sr=8-1&keywords=rtfm ) This is not a basics book. This is a book of references and tricks used by pen-testers and useful to anyone deep enough into security to be testing their environment in the same way. Again, I highly recommend the book, but not as a basic or beginner item. Don Murdoch wrote and published the Blue Team Handbook (amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Team-Handbook-condensed-Responder/dp/1500734756/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415381049&sr=1-1&keywords=blue+team+handbook ) This is a more useful book to the average sys-admin because it is geared more as a how-to than as a straight up reference. It augments your basic security understanding specifically as pertains to incident response. It in no way replaces a good basic foundation. Caveat: I have not yet read either book. All my knowledge on them comes from listening to interviews with both authors. I intend to read the Blue team book and get/use the RTFM and I will update this post when I do.