Preface

There is something about books that makes them one of the most precious things in the world. I've always admired people who write them, and I have always wanted to write one myself. The book you are now holding is a result of many years of work with the referenced Internet technologies and almost a year of hard work putting the words on paper. The preface may be the first thing you are reading, but it is the last thing I am writing. And I can tell you it has been quite a ride.

Aside from my great wish to be a writer in the first place, which only helped me in my effort to make the book as good as possible, there is a valid reason for its existence: a book of this profile is greatly needed by all those who are involved with web security. I, and many of the people I know, need it. I've come to depend on it in my day-to-day work, even though at the time of this writing it is not yet published. The reason this book is needed is that web security is affected by some diverse factors, which interact with each other in web systems and affect their security in varied, often subtle ways. Ultimately, what I tried to do was create one book to contain all the information one needs to secure an Apache-based system. My goal was to write a book I could safely recommend to anyone who is about to deploy on Apache, so I would be confident they would succeed provided they followed the advice in the book. You have, in your hands, the result of that effort.