Intrusion Prevention

An Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is a security device that can monitor network or system activities for any forms of malicious or undesired behaviour. It can then react in real time to prevent or block such activities from happening. For example, a network-based IPS can operate in line so that it can monitor all the traffic for any malicious attacks or codes.

Network-based IPS

If it detects an attack, it will then drop the offending packets without any interruption or interference to other traffic. This kind of technology also incorporates an intrusion detection system so that it can identify threats to IT security. Some intrusion prevention systems are also able to prevent attacks that are yet to be discovered, such as the types caused by a buffer overflow, which is an anomaly where data gets stored outside the memory that has been set aside for it. This can then overwrite the adjacent memory, resulting in errors such as program terminations or system security breaches.