If you have a business network you are most likely connected to the Internet. Malicious hackers keep coming up with clever ways to intrude into unprotected computer systems and they may cause security breaches and havoc. Imagine having all your customer data stolen. That could create some serious problems in your business. You already have perimeter network security like firewalls, etc. But firewalls are limited by their scope – they do not monitor real-time attempts to hack into your network and cannot spot trends in what may be suspicious network activity. So you need intrusion detection systems put in place in addition to those firewalls. These IDS can prevent such hacker attacks as DNS dead drop, SMTP hijacks, remote logins, Injection attacks, Macro insecurity, and OS vulnerabilities like DDOS (distributed denial of service).
You cannot possibly keep track of all the security exploits that are getting discovered often by people across the world. That’s why you need good IDS that keeps itself updated with all the latest security threats automatically. Granted some initial configuration may be required and that may involve some serious effort just to define the scope of IDS in IT and network security. The IDS monitors the network for any suspiciously patterned or abnormal network activity. Such anomalies like open network ports, sudden growth in network usage from particular computers, etc. are usually noticed immediately by the IDS and the administrator is alerted.
Try reading whitepapers on IDS and get in contact with IDS vendors like Juniper, Symantec (Intruder Alert), NetContinuum, and TopLayer.com.