Intruder detection and its benefits for security professionals

Business databases is composed of critical data, breaches into these databases could be hazardous to normal business operations. Cyberattacks have different forms, insider threats, ransomware, DDoS, Phishing and more, but the intruders are always actively looking to prey on something that the organization considers vital and because of this businesses need a right intruder detection procedure to identify, detect, and nullify the threats using a Intrusion Detection System. 

The Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is used for detecting the malicious traffic that enters the corporate network and sends an alert when such activity is observed. Network Behavior Anomaly Detection (NBAD) and alerting is the primary function of any IDS, however certain systems are capable of mitigating the malicious traffic from the detected IP addresses by blocking them and keeping the network safe from external threats. IDS has to be configured properly to understand the normal traffic of the network, once fine-tuned for it IDS will be able to detect the malicious traffic that is coming by logging the traffic and sending alerts to the administrators. 

How does intruder detection works

Intruders can be detected at different levels inside corporate environment, it could be at network, host, based on signatures or using the anomaly. Each of these detection methodologies has its benefits and in some cases one should be better than the other. 

1. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) helps security professionals monitor the inbound and outbound traffic at network level, and send a warning if it finds anything malicious at this level.
2. Host Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS) is something that runs on each devices, it could be computers or network devices but it will help security professionals identify any trespassing that’s happening at host levels, and also better than NIDS as it detects even the internal malicious meddling that happens because of a malware spreading from one computer to another through internal network.
3. Signature-based Intrusion Detection System (SIDS) checks for the pre-defined signatures that’s available in the database and cross check the packets traversing through the network.
4. Anomaly-based Intrusion Detection Systems (AIDS) will monitor the network traffic and verify with an established network behavior. If there is not a match then it alerts the administrators for a malicious activity.

Capabilities of a intruder detection system

Intruder detection can be humongous task with out right IDS procedures, IDS can help security professionals in,

1. Monitoring the traffic, firewalls, routers, key management servers and end user devices.
2. Facilitating security professionals in organizing and tuning their intruder detection protocols.
3. Simplifying operations with a user-friendly interface, so that even a amateur technician could assist the administrators in critical scenarios.
4. Reporting and alerting administrators whenever a malicious behavior is detected.
5. Limiting wrong password attempts and blocking the IP’s in case of malicious traffic flow.

Benefits for security professionals

With a proper IDS, security professionals will be able to identify security incidents and nullify it before it causes chaos to the businesses. Also it can help in improvising the existing security strategies based on the reports and this will help the security professionals identify where they are lagging and can fix it, a few could be network misconfigurations or bugs which could be fixed instantly while other could take a while based on its scope. 

IDS can also be used for achieving and sustaining a regulatory compliance and also be used to study the data packets that has traversing inside the corporate network. With host/device level data identification, scrutinization and auditing, intruder detection will be simplified for security professionals.