Computer networks are the spinal cord of our civilisation; because of the huge stakes involved, universities and certain companies must now teach the basics of computer system security. The purpose of this book is to help people learn about the fundamentals of this field through the study of solved exercices. The primary goal is not to create experts in this domain, but rather to teach the concepts required to understand the risks and consequences of computer system misuse. This book thus handles the basic aspects of computer security, including e-mail; viruses and antivirus programs; program and network vulnerabilities; fire walls, address translation and filtering; cryptography; secure communications; secure applications; and security management.
This work is a novel addition to the literature in that it gives, for each subject, a short summary of the main principles followed by a series of exercises (with solutions), resulting in a self-contained book that provides a solid foundation in computer security to students. Chapters in this book have been conceived to be as independent as possible. All of them, nevertheless, require a background in computer science and a familiarity with the most common network protocols.

Foreword - Forged E-Mail and Spam - Malwares - Network and Application Vulnerabilities - Firewalls and Proxies - Cryptography - Secure Communications - Security at the User Level - Management of Information Security - Acronyms - References.

Performance evaluation is a critical stage of software- and hardware-system development that every computer engineer and scientist should master. Although complex – requiring skills in mathematics, measurement techniques and simulation – performance evaluation is primarily an art; indeed, the most difficult stage in a performance analysis is defining the approach: once you know what to do, it is less difficult to define a plan of attack with your familiar software tools.

With a novel, less classical approach to the subject, the authors have written a book with the conviction that signal processing should be taught to be fun.

With the rapid growth of the language and speech industry, there is an increasing need for specialists able to work in multi-disciplinary projects combining elements of speech processing, natural language processing, and computer science.

This book provides the conceptual foundation required for the design and development of complex distributed and real-time applications.