This book is a general introduction to email virus protection. The chapters are as follows:

1. Understanding the Threats: discusses the various types of viruses, who email works, history of different attacks.
2. Securing Outlook 2000: self-explanatory
3. Security Outlook Express 5.0 and Eudora 4.3:  self-explanatory
4. Web-based Mail issues: various weaknesses and ways of attacking such clients
5. Client-side anti-virus apps: reviews McAfee VirusScan 5, Norton AntiVirus 2000, Trend Micro PC-cillin 2000
6. Mobile Code Protection: covers the Java, JavaScript, ActiveX, and VBScript security models and their weaknesses
7. Personal Firewalls: Reviews Network Ice BlackICE Defender 1.2, Aladdin Networks eSafe 2.2, and others
8. Securing Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Red Hat Linux 6 for E-mail Services: Both in one chapter?!
9. Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5: protecting from spam, maintenance, third-party add-ons
10. Sendmail and IMAP Security: weaknesses, fixes, etc.
11. Deploying Server-side E-mail Content Filters and Scanners: McAfee GroupShield, Trend Micro ScanMail for Exchange Server, and several more.

From the above list of chapters it can be seen how broad the focus of this book is. Who is the intended audience? Home users who need to install client-side virus protection and personal firewalls? Why are Windows 2000 and Linux security covered in the same chapter? The author evidently intends to provide a general overview of the subject of protecting email on both client and server sides, but this probably reduces the usefulness of the book from the point of view of sysadmins who are looking for in-depth treatment of their specific platform and end-to-end enterprise-level solutions. 

The chapter on Exchange is a good example--it covers Exchange 5.5 but not the newer version Exchange 2000, the section on protecting against spam zooms through configuration of IMS settings with little real explanation of the options, and the discussion of Exchange utilities has little relevance to the subject--how are MTACHECK and ISINTEG to be construed as email protection tools? 

The chapter on Outlook 2000 is also quite general and has no discussion of corporate deployment issues. The Outlook Email Security Update is covered in a sidebar but there is no walkthrough of its implementation or details of how to manage it. There is a walkthrough of enabling S/MIME and another of PGP, which is nice, but I wish there were more walkthroughs in this book that were directed to sysadmins (for a differently designed book see my own new book Administering Exchange 2000 Server which has over 150 step-by-step walkthroughs of administrative tasks--couldn't resist a plug there). 

This book is probably good as a first read on the subject for anyone interested in the subject of email virus protection and security. But it's billed on the back cover as a book that "will help system administrators and end-users secure their email." I would take issue with this and suggest that while it is informative for administrators to read, the lack of a specific platform focus reduces its value as an actual guide to implementing email virus protection and security as far as the corporate level is concerned. The book is probably more useful to home office owners and general end-user than administrators. 

You can find the book on Amazon here. I give this book stars out of 5.