There has been an exponential increase in the rate of cybercrime over the past several years as enterprises increasingly conduct more of their business activities online. Cybercriminals have developed more sophisticated tools that offer them greater ability to penetrate and compromise the networks of unsuspecting enterprises, with resulting adverse consequences. There are about 130 reported network security breaches yearly. In 2018 alone, the estimated amount of money lost by businesses globally as a result of cybercrime was $600 billion, corresponding to about 0.8 percent of the global GDP.

To prevent your business enterprise from becoming a victim of cybercrime, it is important to ensure that your network is kept completely secure from any form of threats, whether internal or external. Security tools that are able to recognize and report threats are no longer sufficient to keep your network secure. Your security package should also be able to prevent any detected threats from accessing your network.

What are Network Intrusion Prevention Systems?

A network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is a security tool that monitors and analyzes the traffic of packets to and from a network for any malicious or suspicious activity. This security tool can be hardware, software, or cloud-based. Upon identification of a potential threat, the IPS proactively takes measures to neutralize the threat and ensure that the network remains secure. This is in contrast to network intrusion detection systems which identify the threat and send out an alert but makes no attempt to neutralize it or prevent it from accessing the network.

Benefits of Network Intrusion Prevention Systems

A network Intrusion Prevention System is one of the most advanced as well as sophisticated means of protecting your business network from unwanted intruders. Discussed below are some of the benefits of using an IPS to ensure that your enterprise network is kept secure.

1)  Multiple attack detection methodology

The network IPS uses more than one method to analyze network traffic and detect threats to a network. This is unlike firewalls, antivirus software, and other security tools which have only one method of analyzing network traffic. As such, these other tools have a high rate of threat non-detection compared to network IPS. The methods used by network IPS that enable them to have superior threat detection and prevention capabilities include:

• Signature detection: The IPS compares the signatures of incoming traffic with those of previous malicious attacks. Any packets that are found to be similar to known threats are dropped and prevented from accessing the network.
• Rate-limiting features: This protects against Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attacks. The IPS prevents the volume of traffic from exceeding a threshold previously established by a network administrator. The IPS throttles the network traffic if attempts are made to exceed the traffic threshold.
• Behavior-based: The IPS monitors normal traffic patterns and issues alerts when there is a deviation from the normal traffic pattern.

2)  Enterprise customization

Different enterprises are susceptible to different types of network threats and therefore need security solutions specific to their enterprise. A network IPS offers administrators the ability to customize their security solutions to address relevant threats to their network. For example, an enterprise that is prone to threats by phishing can have its IPS customized to monitor incoming emails for phishing attempts and prevent them from getting to users within its network.

3)  Support of other network security controls

An IPS can be used to support the workload of other security controls or protocols that you may have in your network. By filtering out malicious or suspicious traffic before it reaches your network, the IPS reduces the amount of traffic your other security controls have to deal with. As a result, the efficiency of your other security processes is increased because there is a decreased risk of their becoming overwhelmed by high traffic volumes which may impact your network performance.

The Bottom Line

At Cyber Sainik, we understand how important having an intrusion prevention system is essential to the security of your network. We have a team of experts ready to work with you and set up a security solution customized to your enterprise’s needs. Contact us today for more information on our IDS and IPS solutions for enterprises, SMBs, and businesses of all sizes.