Evaluating Enterprise IPS: Seven Key Requirements

Network Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) can be effective tools in the arsenal of the security practitioner—or they can be expensive failures. To help ensure the former, an enterprise IPS deployment should meet seven key requirements. Security managers looking to install IPS in their networks will be able to use evaluation criteria in this white paper as a way to help differentiate products and identify those most suited to an enterprise deployment.

The seven requirements for enterprise-class IPS are:

1. Availability of a broad hardware range with offerings ranging from branch-office T1-class devices to enterprise multi-gigabit systems;
2. A detection engine incorporating multiple technologies, including signature matching and protocol anomaly and behavior anomaly detection;
3. An ability to provide a "big picture" context of information about the network and its devices to qualify security information as well as speed analysis;
4. IDS-like features to detect less critical threats, perform behavioral analysis and facilitate security forensics toolkits;
5. Centralized management and alerting capabilities across multiple devices;
6. An analysis toolkit that efficiently drives policy refinement; and,
7. Network security tools, especially firewalling, to simplify deployment.

Nokia is well positioned to help companies protect against viruses, abuse, hackers, and information theft so business keeps moving. Together, with partners like Check Point and Sourcefire, Nokia provides network and mobile security solutions so companies can provide an increasingly mobile workforce access to business information without compromise.

Prepared by Opus One; Sponsored by Nokia.

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