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The animal on the cover of Apache Security is an Arabian horse (Equus caballus). Thousands of years ago, Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula (now comprising Syria, Iraq, and Iran) began breeding these horses as war mounts. Desert conditions were harsh, so Arabian horses lived in close proximity to their owners, sometimes even sharing their tents. This breed, known for its endurance, speed, intelligence, and close affinity to humans, evolved and flourished in near isolation before gaining popularity throughout the rest of the world.

The widespread enjoyment of Arabians as pleasure horses and endurance racers is generally attributed to the strict breeding of the Bedouins. According to the Islamic people, the Arabian horse was a gift from Allah. Its broad forehead, curved profile, wide-set eyes, arched neck, and high tail are distinct features of the Arabian breed, and these characteristics were highly valued and obsessed over during the breeding process. Because the Bedouins valued purity of strain above all else, many tribes owned only one primary strain of horse. These strains, or families, were named according to the tribe that bred them, and the genealogy of strains was always traced through the dam. Mythical stories accompanied any recitation of a substrain's genealogy. The daughters and granddaughters of legendary mares were much sought after by powerful rulers. One such case occurred around the 14th century, when Sultan Nacer Mohamed Ibn Kalaoun paid well over the equivalent of $5.5 million for a single mare.

Many Arabian pedigrees can still be traced to desert breeding. The Bedouins kept no written breeding records, but since they placed such high value on purity, the designation "desert-bred" is accepted as an authentic verification of pure blood. Arabians are also commonly crossed with other breeds, including thoroughbreds, Morgans, paint horses, Appaloosas, and quarter horses. Today, Arabian horses continue to be distinguished by their bloodlines. Breeding them involves a constant crossing of strains.

Matt Hutchinson was the production editor for Apache Security . GEX, Inc. provided production services. Darren Kelly, Lydia Onofrei, Claire Cloutier, and Emily Quill provided quality control.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is an original engraving from the 19th century. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with Adobe InDesign CS using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Joe Wizda to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Lydia Onofrei.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Ken Douglass, and Ellie Cutler) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, Ellie Cutler, and Jeff Liggett.