Evaluating enterprise intrusion detection system vendors

Careful planning must go into an enterprise's intrusion detection and intrusion prevention system purchase. There is no one-size-fits-all product, so all vendors and their offerings must be evaluated with specific questions in mind.

Below is a list of questions to help your enterprise evaluate potential vendors and products with its specific IDS/IPS needs in mind. Additionally, view a list of intrusion detection system vendors to keep in mind when selecting prospective candidates.

Questions to ask during vendor evaluation

1. Given the assets that require IDS/IPS protection, the current network configuration and the proj­ect budget, where would the primary components of your IDS/IPS product or service typically be lo­cated? For example, does the IDS/IPS sensor sit directly behind the firewall or between the DMZ and the internal network? Are IDS/IPS sensors deployed inside the internal network? If so, how many and where?
2. If the IDS/IPS project is part of a managed security service, how will IPS/IDS sensors be maintained, and what level of access will managed security ser­vice employees need to the customer's IDS/IPS sys­tem? Given compliance directives such as PCI DSS, which authentication methods, network traffic en­cryption methods and administrative audit controls are compatible with the managed security service?
3. In a managed security service scenario, does the vendor -- through packet captures or other means -- have access to the network traffic flowing through the IDS/IPS sensor? Can this capability be disabled by the customer? Is the customer's network traffic routed through any of the vendor's networks or sys­tems other than the IDS/IPS?
4. What kind of network events can be detected by the IDS/IPS product? What is the effectiveness of the system in detecting attacks like distributed de­nial-of-service attacks, network-based buffer over­flow attacks, network scans and botnet communica­tions? Does the system have data loss prevention, advanced malware detection and operating system vulnerability-assess­ment capabilities? Is packet capture an option?
5. What kind of sensor management is necessary for the IDS/IPS sensors? Is it an appliance, software for a physical server, or a virtual machine? Can an ex­isting management product such as McAfee ePol­icy Orchestrator work in place of a new manage­ment console? What are the limitations of these approaches, in terms of reporting options and the number of sensors that they support? How will sen­sor management be updated and configured? Will it automatically detect sensor failure and how will these failures be handled? Are these sensors true high-availability products that automatically fail over? How will the network be affected should these sensors fail?
6. Given the network throughput, how many and what kind of supporting devices -- such as network aggregators and IDS/IPS load balancers -- will be re­quired? Are these true high-availability products that automatically fail over? How will the network be affected should these devices fail? How will these supporting devices be managed?
7. Can the proposed IDS/IPS product integrate with existing customer security controls, such as end­point host IPS, unified threat management-based IDS/IPS, or existing open source IDS/IPS products like SNORT?
8. How will sensor data be correlated and analyzed? Will the product or service be reporting incidents to a third-party data aggregation platform, such as Splunk, or a security incident and event management product such as LogRhythm, HP ArcSight, McAfee NitroSecurity or Splunk Enterprise Secu­rity? How much human effort is required for analy­sis of the IDS/IPS data? How much analysis can be automated?
9. How are IDS/IPS sensor operating system up­dates handled? Can they be automatically pushed or pulled? Is this a manual process and how much downtime is required to restart a sensor after an op­erating system update? Can attack signature updates be applied automatically and, if so, how frequently can this occur? How often are these signatures up­dated? How are the sensor OS and attack signature updates protected from man-in-the-middle attacks? Are any special firewall rules required for the up­dates to be received?
10. How does the IDS/IPS architecture balance high network throughput, high availability and accurate detection of network-based threats? How are the intrusion detection and prevention systems' sen­sors tuned? Can they automatically adjust to new types of attacks without affecting network through­put?

Vendors at a glance

Below is a representative list of intrusion detection and prevention vendors:

• Check Point
• Cisco
• Core Security
• Corero Network Security (previously Top Layer Security)
• Dell
• Extreme Networks (acquired Enterasys)
• F5 Networks
• FireEye
• Fortinet
• Gigamon
• GuidePoint Security
• HP
• IBM
• Juniper Networks
• ManageEngine
• McAfee
• NitroSecurity (acquired by McAfee)
• Palo Alto Networks
• Radware
• Snort (Sourcefire/Cisco)
• Solutionary (acquired by NTT)
• Sourcefire (acquired by Cisco)
• Splunk
• StoneSoft (McAfee)
• Trend Micro

About the author:
Bill Hayes is a former oceanography student and military veteran, and a journalism school graduate. After flirting with computer game design in the 1980s, Hayes pursued a full-time career in IT support and currently works as a cybersecurity analyst for a Midwestern utility company, as well as a freelance expert consultant and writer.