> We have intrushield deployed here, and I am disappointed. The ability
> to create user-defined signatures is very poor. There is no way to
make a signature to look at all ports and protocols, so with a UDS,
you must specify a protocol for it to look at. There is no
command-line access to write signatures, so you must use their Java
GUI. There is no way to import sigs from other vendors, such as snort,
and the rule flexibilty is just not there. The built-in signatures is
a closed-set, so you do not know what IntruShield's signatures are
firing on. You also cannot filter out traffic. There are filters
available, but they only work on signature based detection. Anomaly
detection will still fire on the filtered traffic. I have yet to get
the logging capability to work. You can set it to log X packets, but
it won't display them when you view alerts.
I was impressed with the Juniper/Netscreen/Onesecure
IDP and its strength in user defined signatures and
the visibility of the vendor provided ones. It also
has:
- excellent packet capture and analysis capabilities
(configurable pre and post event capture per
signature, highlighting of trigger packet, and
ability to use built-in and/or external
packet viewer)
- a wealth of actions to choose when signatures match
(log, packet capture, email, syslog, snmptrap,
script execution, timed firewall entries on src
or dest address, port, and/or netblock)
- good exception capabilities (active for both
signatures and protocol anomalies)
- very flexible and easy to use reporting and user
interface capabilities
I think its safe to say that all the products are
maturing rapidly, have unique strengths and weaknesses,
and will leap frog each other over time. If you're
interested in flexibility, insight into your network
traffic, understanding of how vendor signatures are
working, and the the ability to rapidly produce your
own signatures, give the product a test drive.
Gary Flynn
Security Engineer
James Madison University
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