Cyber-security issues affect organizations at all levels due to their dependences on computerized network technologies and their underlying infrastructures. Despite the best efforts, and best practice approaches, networked environments continue to face ever increasing threats. Trojan horses, worms, viruses, malware, DoS and DoS, backdoor attacks, SQL injections, and malicious spyware are but a few of the risks facing today’s mission critical operations of organizational networks. While firewalls do act as a security checkpoint, network threats can and do penetrate these devices. Because of this problem, and the ever increasing operational risks to networks, Intrusion Detection Systems and Intrusion Prevention systems (IDPS) are now being used alongside of firewalls as an in-depth defense layered approach for network hardening. These devices have gained popularity over the past decade and a half due to their ability to detect and often prevent unwanted security intrusions into networks. Due to limitations in presentation time, and the sheer complexity required to understand the computer science and engineering aspects of IDPSs, the main focus of this presentation will be on explaining the theoretical and conceptual aspects of IDPSs, and the benefits that they provide to networked systems.
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