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Flawed Intrusion Detection = A 46% Gash In Your Profits

November 5, 2014

When you've invested heavily in a new intrusion detection or prevention system, you expect that it’s going to protect your clients and your entire network. But, the success of your system isn’t solely dependent on the appliance itself. When your system fails, what’s preventing a data breach, and how do you know one has occurred?

The Cost of Being Hacked

Being hacked is almost an inevitable part of doing business and housing data. That’s not to say you shouldn’t invest in network security. But, because of the prevalence of data breaches – 50,000 network intrusions are detected every day – it’s critical to be able to detect intrusions so you’re able to address them.

The frequency with which intrusions are detected is scary enough, but what’s more, the cost of an intrusion on your network has increased by 15% since last year. The infamous breach on the Target network cost the Minnesota company 46% of its quarterly profit year over year, which isn’t even included in the costs depicted above.

Introducing a Point of Failure

For all the good that IDS or IPS provides your business or your clients, it could present a point of failure in your network infrastructure. When appliances become oversubscribed and go down, or require repairs or maintenance, network traffic is no longer captured – due to a broken network link. And while built-in capabilities that protect against failures seem foolproof, if the appliance itself goes down, it’s incapable of utilizing such features. 

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The Network Edge

Proper network design starts with an understanding of the edge of your network. To avoid downtime and ensure that an intrusion detection or prevention system is able to provide the security you or your clients paid for, you must protect against the risk of oversubscription.

Edge devices are tools capable of accessing and directing traffic from your network to the in-line and passive appliances you employ. They also filter and load-balance network traffic to protect against oversubscription and ensure your applications’ functions.

Learn more about the network edge and the devices that preserve the sanctity of your network and data. Download our complimentary whitepaper: Managing the Edge of the Network: a New Necessity for Security Architects today.

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Heartbeats Packets Inside the Bypass TAP

If the inline security tool goes off-line, the TAP will bypass the tool and automatically keep the link flowing. The Bypass TAP does this by sending heartbeat packets to the inline security tool. As long as the inline security tool is on-line, the heartbeat packets will be returned to the TAP, and the link traffic will continue to flow through the inline security tool.

If the heartbeat packets are not returned to the TAP (indicating that the inline security tool has gone off-line), the TAP will automatically 'bypass' the inline security tool and keep the link traffic flowing. The TAP also removes the heartbeat packets before sending the network traffic back onto the critical link.

While the TAP is in bypass mode, it continues to send heartbeat packets out to the inline security tool so that once the tool is back on-line, it will begin returning the heartbeat packets back to the TAP indicating that the tool is ready to go back to work. The TAP will then direct the network traffic back through the inline security tool along with the heartbeat packets placing the tool back inline.

Some of you may have noticed a flaw in the logic behind this solution!  You say, “What if the TAP should fail because it is also in-line? Then the link will also fail!” The TAP would now be considered a point of failure. That is a good catch – but in our blog on Bypass vs. Failsafe, I explained that if a TAP were to fail or lose power, it must provide failsafe protection to the link it is attached to. So our network TAP will go into Failsafe mode keeping the link flowing.

Glossary

  1. Single point of failure: a risk to an IT network if one part of the system brings down a larger part of the entire system.

  2. Heartbeat packet: a soft detection technology that monitors the health of inline appliances. Read the heartbeat packet blog here.

  3. Critical link: the connection between two or more network devices or appliances that if the connection fails then the network is disrupted.

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