Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Definition

The network security system continuously scans network traffic for threats is a crucial component of IPS. The IPS technology is also an intrusion detection and prevention system under the general definition of IPS (IDPs).

IPS as an Adaptable Safeguard Technology for System Security

Businesses prefer IPS solutions over more conventional reactive network security measures because they proactively identify and stop unwanted traffic from causing harm. Through real-time network traffic monitoring and network behavior analysis, IPS defense detects potential threats.

The IPS detects suspicious activity when an unauthorized attacker gains access to the network, logs the IP address, and initiates an automated response to the threat based on pre-established rules by the network administrator.

IPS consists of a firewall, anti-spoofing, anti-virus/anti-malware, and network traffic monitoring tools. Businesses utilize IPS to track security policy issues, identify threats, and stop external or internal security transgressions.

How Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) Work

To evaluate all network traffic flow in real-time and take automated preventive action, an IPS security service is often placed "in-line," where it sits in the direct communication path between the source and the destination. The IPS can be installed anywhere in the network, although the following locations are the most typical ones:

·        Enterprise Data Center, Perimeter.

·        Enterprise Edge.

The same functionality can be enabled in the consolidated IPS function inside a next-generation firewall or deployed as an independent IPS (NGFW). To detect malicious traffic, an IPS uses signatures that can be both vulnerability- and exploit-specific. These often use statistical anomaly-based detection or signature-based detection to spot harmful behavior.

• Signature-based Detection: It makes use of distinctive signatures that are in the exploit code. When exploits occur, their signatures add to a growing database. Either vulnerability-facing signatures, which identify the vulnerability in the system that attacked, or exploit-facing signatures, which determine the specific exploits themselves, are used in signature-based detection for IPS. Vulnerability-facing signatures are crucial to find potential exploit versions that have yet to be seen. However, they also raise the possibility of false positive findings.
• Statistical Anomaly-based Detection: This takes a random sample of network traffic and compares it to benchmark performance levels. Then, the IPS initiates an action to stop a potential attack when pieces are found outside the baseline.

Once the IPS has located the malicious traffic that may allow for network exploitation, it deploys a virtual patch to provide security. A virtual patch protects users from threats that use known and undiscovered vulnerabilities. To provide coverage against exposure at the network level rather than the host level, it employs layers of security policies and rules that stop and intercept an exploit from traversing network paths to and from a vulnerability.

Potential Attacks Detected and Prevented By IPS

An IPS security solution needs to handle various types of attacks, such as:

• Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Spoofing: A genuine system's traffic is redirected to the attacker in this attack. An attacker can link their MAC address to the IP address of a system they've compromised by sending bogus ARP packets.
• Buffer Overflow: This attack corrupts an application's execution by overwriting memory using flaws in the buffer overflow.
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS): A DDoS assault entails an enormous influx of traffic from dispersed machines intended to overwhelm a system and render it unusable for valid requests.
• IP Fragmentation: This attack takes advantage of the way datagram fragmentation techniques mislead the target system about how to put TCP/UDP datagrams back together.
• Operating System (OS) Fingerprinting: These attacks exploit vulnerabilities in the OS.
• Ping of Death: An attacker can crash a system by sending large or improperly formatted packets using the ping command.
• Port Scanning: This is a port attack, scanning for an open, unprotected port to exploit.
• Server Message Block (SMB) Probes: The goal of this capture is to transmit authentication requests made via the SMB protocol to the attacker's host.
• Smurf: This DDoS attack floods a system with Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets.
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Evasion: This circumvents network security by taking advantage of SSL and Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption to disguise dangerous content.
• SYN Flood: In this attack, a server or firewall is overrun by a large number of SYN (synchronize) packets submitted as connection requests.

Extreme AirDefense

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