Intrusion Detection System

Detect attacks on the network and log and report the incident

Types of Alerts

True Positive: Malicious activity identified as an attack
True Negative: Legitimate activity detected so no alerts
False Positive: Legitimate activity is detected as an attack
False Negative: Malicious activity is not detected as an attack

Intrusion Prevention System

Detect attacks on network and actively try and prevent it
Makes changes to the ACL or closes services, sessions or ports

Intrusion Detection VS Prevention Systems: What’s The Difference?

IDS/IPS Types

Host-based

Called as HIDS/HIPS
Installed on servers and workstations
Detect attacks on the hosts not on the network
Will impact the hosts performance

Network-based

Called as NIDS/NIPS
Standalone device on the network
It is configured on a SPAN or mirrored port of the backbone switch
Uses sensors on the network devices to report on attacks
Cant monitor traffic of individual hosts

Wireless

Called as WIDS/WIPS
Attempts to detect DOS attacks on the wireless network

Monitoring Techniques

Signature-based Detection

Looks for a specific string of bytes to trigger an alert
Can only detect attacks based on the patterns present in its database

Pattern-matching

Specific pattern of steps
Commonly used on NIDS, WIDS

Stateful-matching

Compares against known system baseline
Commonly used on HIDS

Anomaly-based Detection

Also called Behavior-based Detection
Analyze current network traffic against established baseline traffic and alerts if outside the statistical average

Statistical
Protocol
Traffic
Rule/Heuristic
Application-based