We live in a world where there is a growing necessity of being online. We need to be online for pretty much everything we do on our daily lives and we can’t really stop going unless our Internet connection fails. We need to go online to check our email, our social media accounts, our favorite newspaper and so on.
But as we all know, the Internet isn’t exactly safe. There are millions of hackers out there and there is no one safe out there unless some precautions are taken. If we do use the Internet to check on our favorite newspaper we can tell that there are dozens of large-scaled Internet attacks yearly, and we can multiply that number if we want to see small scaled attacks.
Our computers come with a type of protection that does a lot for us while we don’t even notice it: the firewall. A firewall basically enforces policy based on a protocol that comes with it already. Put simply, it checks the sources addresses and destinations of what is coming and going into our computer, and blocks what isn’t wanted.
There are, however, two more systems related to firewalls that we need to understand. These are IDS (Intrusion Detection System) and IPS (Intrusion Prevention System). Both of these systems improve our security by monitoring traffic and scanning data that just doesn’t look right. These mostly work with data that has already been detected or recognized – not by our computers, but by the company offering the protection system.
Intrusion Detection System
There are, however, differences between them. IDS provides a new level of preventive security to any network it is working with, by detecting any type of malicious or suspicious activity going on in the network itself. Through the recognition of malicious activity, a user can understand that something is going on and can take action against it – which is crucial.
Intrusion Prevention System
IPS is a system that immediately prevents access to an network in order to keep it safe from any attackers and possible threats. It won’t keep good data away from the network, but it is designed to keep malicious data away by blocking it and by tacking neutralizing action against it, mostly stopping its development before it’s too late. For example, it can create a series of rules that will enforce the prevention in order to keep this type of data away.
As technology advances, the line that differentiates these two is getting thinner and thinner, since most protection system include both of them in the same package. Both of them are essential and one isn’t as effective without the other. To stay safe online, it is recommended that users take advantage of both these systems.