A Comparative Study of Related Technologies of Intrusion Detection & Prevention Systems

The rapid growth of computer networks has changed the prospect of network security. An easy accessibility condition causes computer networks to be vulnerable against numerous and potentially devastating threats from hackers. Up to the moment, researchers have developed Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) capable of detecting attacks in several available environments. A boundlessness of methods for misuse detection as well as anomaly detection has been applied. Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) evolved after that to resolve ambiguities in passive network monitoring by placing detection systems on the line of attack. IPS in other words is IDS that are able to give prevention commands to firewalls and access control changes to routers. IPS can be seen as an improvement upon firewall technologies. It can make access control decisions based on application content, rather than IP address or ports as traditional firewalls do. The next innovation is the combination of IDS and IPS known as Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS) capable of detecting and preventing attacks from happening. This paper presents an overview of IDPS followed by their classifications and applications. A new signature based IDPS architecture named HawkEye Solutions has been proposed by the authors. Authors have presented the basic building blocks of the IDS, which include mechanisms for carrying out TCP port scans, Traceroute scan, ping scan and packet sniffing to monitor network health detect various types of attacks. Real time implementation results of the system have been presented. Finally a comparative analysis of various existing IDS/IPS solutions with HawkEye Solutions emphasizes its significance.