A Design for Building an IPS Using Open Source Products

An IPS or Intrusion Prevention System can be an important component for protecting systems on a network. An IPS is based upon an IDS or Intrusion Detection System with the added component of taking some action, often in real time, to prevent an intrusion once detected by the IDS. This paper describes a design for an IPS built from all Open Source products and is based upon research done at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Rice campus. The goal of the research was to develop a design for an IPS that could be applied to any small to medium sized network. This paper is written for technical integrators who are interested in building their own IPS without incurring software licensing costs.