The SANS Institute

www.sans.org

The SANS (Systems Administration, Networking, and Security) Institute sponsors the Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) Program, a series of security certifications with a more technical hands-on focus than the CISSP certification. It’s an excellent complement to CISSP certification, and SANS offers a 40 percent discount on its GSEC (GIAC Security Essentials Certification) certification for those with CISSP certification.

This Web site also includes SANS conference schedules, an extremely helpful security digest, the SANS online bookstore, various projects, resources, security links, sample security policies, white papers, GIAC student practicals, and security tools.

The site also includes the SANS/FBI Top Twenty Vulnerabilities list. This list, cosponsored by the FBI National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), helps organizations prioritize security efforts by listing and describing the top 20 Internet security vulnerabilities in three categories: General Vulnerabilities, Windows Vulnerabilities, and UNIX Vulnerabilities.