IDS / IPS – The need of the hour!
The recent data breach on T-Mobile US Inc sent shock waves in the telecommunications community. Being a reputed name in the industry, it has put the data of 47 million customers at risk, due to lack of sophisticated security plugs. The compromised data includes personal information like social security number, account PINS and motor license of their customers both past, present and future and to make matters worse a dark forum had posted the private data breached from T-Mobile.
The incident has raised eyebrows on how safe is our private data with our telecom service provider. Even a slightest of intrusion to your network can expose your business to threat actors leading to loss of reputation and customer confidence.
A threat actor can target your open network or digital operations. The wider your resources the broader is the attack. With digital transformation, cloud computing services and work from home scaling up since the lockdown started in March 2020, attack surface has become widespread and the need for vigilance mechanisms like Intrusion detection system (IDS) and intrusion prevention system (IPS) has become imperative.
So, which is better, IDS or IPS?
This is a very tricky question as both have their own functions to plug breach in your network system. The IDS detect malicious activity and reports to the administrator whereas, IPS is a framework that identifies, reports and prevents penetration of the malware. With the overlap, the vendors have integrated the function of both the technologies to provide a wholesome protection to the businesses. IPS can be integrated with firewall to provide allow or drop access based on signature matches.
Although IDS/IPS is an application, it is more like a framework, mostly deployed or integrated within an existing network appliances like Firewalls, Routers/Gateways. Since it works mostly in line with the packet flow, and not as a stand-alone application, it’s more like a framework.
IDS is the industry standard but selectively intrusion can be stopped via IPS with set policies. Sometimes due to false positives it can lead to network connectivity issues. Hence IPS needs constant monitoring and readjusting.
It is important to understand the threat posed to your organization before choosing a security technology. Inconsistent behavior is detected by IDS/IPS to compare the network traffic and recognize the intrusion event.
Use of sophisticated and secure SD-WAN like Software Defined Mobile Aggregated Data (SMOAD) can aggregate bandwidth across mobile uplinks as network overlay with control functions. It results in higher bandwidth, redundancy and smooth traffic. SMOAD is reliable, secure and scalable leaving your business protected from intruders.
SMOAD’s SD-WAN based solution powers you with;
1) “Always On / Uninterrupted Connectivity using (4G + Broadband)” – Dual-Network Router
2) Extend corporate network accesses via secure Layer 2 (L2) Bridge”
3) Custom manage bandwidth usage with “Application Prioritization”
4) Filter out unwanted websites with “Content Filtering”
5) “Enhanced access via ZTNA” and extra cover of security with Intrusion detection and prevention feature (IDS/IPS)
6) PCI DSS & HIPAA Compliant