Time to read: 7 minutes 17 seconds | Updated: October 31, 2025
IDS/IPS What is IDS/IPS?
IIntrusion Detection System (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) are cybersecurity technologies that work together to detect and prevent malicious activities in networks. They play a crucial role in protecting networks against cyber threats such as malware, unauthorized access attempts, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. IDS is a passive monitoring tool that analyzes traffic and generates alerts when it detects potential threats. IPS is an active security mechanism that can drop malicious packets, reconfigure firewall rules, or even isolate affected network segments in real time. The combination of IDS and IPS enhances security posture by providing both detection and automated response capabilities.
How does IDS/IPS work?
IDS/IPS relies on a combination of three methods to identify and respond to security threats:
- Signature-based detection: Compares network traffic to a database of known attack patterns. If a match is found, an alert is triggered or action is taken. While effective against known threats, this method struggles with new or evolving attack patterns.
- Anomaly-based detection: Establishes a baseline of normal network behavior and flags deviations that may indicate an attack. It is particularly useful for detecting zero-day exploits or advanced persistent threats (APTs).
- Behavioral analysis: Uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify suspicious behavior that deviates from established norms, even if no known signature exists.
IDS/IPS inspects network packets in real time, analyzes traffic flows, and determine whether traffic is legitimate or malicious. If a potential threat is identified, IDS generates alerts, while IPS actively blocks or mitigates the threat.
Why should I consider IDS/IPS?
With cyber threats becoming more sophisticated and frequent, organizations must implement proactive security measures to protect their networks and sensitive data. IDS/IPS provides an essential layer of defense against a wide range of attacks, including:
- Malware infections: Detect and block malware before it can spread within the network.
- Unauthorized access attempts: Identify and mitigate intrusion attempts by unauthorized users or malicious insiders.
- Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks: Prevent attackers from overwhelming network resources and disrupting business operations.
- Data exfiltration: Identify suspicious data transfer patterns that may indicate data breaches or insider threats.
- Zero-day attacks: Detect anomalies and new attack patterns that traditional security solutions may miss.
Integrating IDS/IPS into a broader security strategy can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches, service disruptions, and financial losses caused by cyber threats.
Benefits of IDS/IPS
Implementing IDS/IPS provides numerous benefits, including:
- Enhanced threat detection: Real-time monitoring and deep packet inspection to identify threats at an early stage.
- Automated threat response: Inline IPS solutions can take immediate action against threats, reducing the time it takes to mitigate risks.
- Reduced attack surface: Helps minimize an organization’s exposure to cyber threats by blocking malicious traffic and unauthorized access attempts.
- Compliance and regulatory requirements: Meets compliance mandates that require IDS/IPS implementation to protect sensitive data (e.g., PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR).
- Network visibility and intelligence: Provides valuable insights into network traffic patterns, helping organizations identify vulnerabilities and improve their overall security posture.
- Scalability and integration: Integrate with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, firewalls, and other security tools to create a comprehensive security ecosystem.
IDS/IPS is an essential component of modern cybersecurity frameworks, helping organizations detect, prevent, and respond to cyber threats using advanced detection techniques and automated responses. Whether deployed inline or out-of-band, IDS/IPS plays a critical role in maintaining network integrity, compliance, and overall security resilience.
HPE and IDS/IPS
HPE Juniper Networking offers IDS/IPS that can be deployed on next-generation firewall products and services: physical, virtual, and containerized SRX firewalls, or as a firewall as a service (FWaaS).
With IDS/IPS, organizations can define policy rules to match a section of traffic based on a zone, a network, or an application, and then take active or passive preventative actions on that traffic when an intrusion is detected. Moreover, the system contains robust and continuously updated IPS signatures to secure networks against attacks.
Both HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-WAN and HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-Branch offer a unified security approach, delivering real-time threat detection, prevention, and visibility across the entire network with IDS/IPS.
The IDS/IPS capability uses a signature-based detection model that inspects all traffic using a regularly updated signature library to detect known threats such as ransomware, phishing, and malware. Administrators can configure lenient, moderate, or strict security postures to allow, alert, or drop traffic based on detected threats. The system operates in either inline mode for immediate blocking or performance mode for out-of-path inspection to optimize network efficiency. All detected threats are logged, categorized, and visualized through a centralized security dashboard. This provides network-wide visibility, threat analytics, and incident management with insights into attack trends, affected users, devices, and traffic flows.
Threat events can be streamed to SIEM solutions like Splunk through a dedicated application, enabling real-time threat correlation, investigation, and response across the entire SD-WAN fabric. By integrating IDS/IPS with firewall policies, HPE ensures a proactive, zero trust security model, protecting the network from evolving cyber threats with minimal manual intervention.
FAQs
What can you do with IDS/IPS?
IDS/IPS constantly watches your network, identifying possible incidents and logging information about them, stopping incidents, and reporting them to security administrators. In addition, some networks use IDS/IPS for identifying problems with security policies and deterring individuals from violating security policies. IDS/IPS has become a necessary addition to the security infrastructure of most organizations, precisely because it gathers information about the network while stopping attackers.
Do firewalls include IDS or IPS?
True next-generation firewalls contain IDS and IPS functionality. However, not all firewalls are next-generation firewalls. Also, a firewall blocks and filters network traffic, while IDS and IPS detect and alert or block an exploit attempt, depending on configuration. IDS and IPS act on traffic after the firewall filters the traffic, according to configured policy.
How are IDS and IPS implemented?
An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is responsible for identifying attacks and techniques and is often deployed out of band in a listen-only mode so that it can analyze all traffic and generate intrusion events from suspect or malicious traffic.
An Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is often deployed in the path of traffic so that all traffic must pass through the appliance to continue to its destination. Upon detection of malicious traffic, the IPS breaks the connection and drops the session or traffic.
Can IPS block traffic?
Yes. An IPS constantly monitors traffic for known exploits to protect the network. The IPS then compares the traffic against existing signatures. If a match occurs, the IPS will take one of three actions: 1) detect and log the traffic, 2) detect and block the traffic, or 3) (the recommended option) detect, log, and block the traffic.
What can an IDS detect?
An IDS detects threats based on patterns of known exploits, malicious behaviors, and attack techniques. An effective IDS also detects evasive techniques attackers use to hide exploits, such as remote procedure call (RPC) fragmentation, HTML padding, and other types of TCP/IP manipulation.
Can an IPS prevent DDoS?
An IPS can prevent certain types of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. For example, application denial of service (AppDoS) attacks are one of the threat categories that IPS functionality can identify and protect against. However, volumetric DDoS threats require a dedicated solution.