Intrusion Detection Systems The second component of Aii’s security is Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). This excellent technology gathers and analyzes information from various areas within a computer or network, identifying unauthorized system misuse as it happens, providing early detection of threats, and enabling breach containment. IDS extends a layered security infrastructure to protect customers from internal, external and unknown attacks.

Aii combines both network based (NIDS) and Host based (HIDS) intrusion detection as their strengths are complimentary. NIDS is placed on network perimeters, and core servers are further protected by HIDS.

A HIDS finds suspicious activity or known attack patterns on the specific host where it is installed. HIDS can detect backdoors into a network, such as unsecured modems or links from other organization units or business partners, and can detect insider attacks that don’t traverse the network perimeter.

A NIDS collects information from the network traffic stream as it travels on the network segment. NIDS high network bandwidth is a major challenge, there is minimal performance impact on hosts and networks, it is transparent to users, and can detect attacks based on malformed packets and denial-of-service attacks not easily visible to host based systems.