Jason,
The ROI in a medium+ organization does not come from using IPS as a
patch replacement system. The IPS lets the organization schedule the
patches at its convenience instead of the de facto schedule implied by
the release of the patch. That is, without something like an IPS in
place, the organization needs to apply patches as quickly as possible to
maintain their security posture. This is problematic for many reasons.
However, there are two common, major ones. First, it can take months
(even longer) to deploy a patch to all levels of an organization. During
this time the organization remains vulnerable. Second, it is difficult
to manage multiple overlapping patch and/or frequent patch processes.
The IPS allows them to delay patch installation until it is convenient
and this is where the ROI materializes. The IPS protects the
organization until it can deploy the patch everywhere. The ROI here is
obvious when a worm hits before you can complete the patch installation.
It turns out that the cost to install a dozen patches at once (even from
multiple vendors) is not much more than the cost to install one critical
patch. So an organization that can defer all patch installation to the
beginning of each quarter for example can reap huge dividends over the
cost of rolling out each patch individually. They only need to test one
set of changes prior to applying them (instead of several per quarter).
In addition, the number of different configurations present in the
organization at any moment is reduced, thereby lowering support costs.
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: Jason [mailto:security@brvenik.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 3:47 PM
To: Scott Wimer
Cc: Daniel; focus-ids@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: IPS, alternative solutions
I've heard of no medium+ sized business that is considering deploying
inline technology on the internals of the network in a sufficiently
pervasive manner that there would be any measurable benefit from the
technology over patching and asset management.
I would be seriously interested in an ROI that can demonstrate savings.
The simple question is how is inline packet scrubbing easier and more
cost effective than patching?
Scott Wimer wrote:
Daniel,
I agree with your assessment. What I have encountered in the
financial sector though is a desire to have the packets "scrubbed"
before they reach the servers. People _want_ to deploy network based
IPS tools because it is easier and more cost effective. That it
doesn't seem to be possible yet is another story altogether.
Regards, Scott Wimer
On Tue, 2004-09-14 at 06:01, Daniel wrote:
So far there has been a load of talk discussing which is the better
technology. Personally i dont think IPS is ready for the big time.
Yeah its great for small mum and dad networks, but for large
financial networks with billions of pounds flowing across them, would
you trust a technology to think and block what it seems as bad
traffic?
So what are the alternatives? I'd say more host based protection such
as:
- Stack protection - Application level firewalls
(ModSecurity/SecureIIS) - Host based firewalls
I'm interested to see what everyone else feels are alternatives to
IPS
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