re[2]: Intrusion Risk Assessment

[Richard Bennison <richard.bennison () tolerant co uk>]

> The problem with this is, define "damage."  IDS systems are not aware of
the nature of what they defend.  An IIS exploit might be utterly useless
against an apache web server, but the IDS is not intrinically aware of
which servers are apache and which are IIS.  Add to that the fact that
such severity levels as "minor damage" or "minimal access to recover,"
are dependent upon the information stored on a machine (which no current
IDS could ever be cognizant of) as well as the role of that machine.
 <

Accounting for the string above, this is where the relationship between vulnerability assessment (VA) and Intrusion 
detection/prevention (IDP) becomes key. If a NIDS or HIDS is aware of the nature of the system(s) it is protecting then 
it can respond relative to the liability of the system to the attack. 

Apologies if this is answering the incorrect string....

It is untrue that IDP cannot be cognizant of the systems protected, as although you may not be able to respond relative 
to the box type, you can respond based on patch liability or services running on the box i.e. IIS attacks on Apache, if 
the IDP knows that the box is not running IIS (or is running IIS patched) why would it need to block/report the attack. 
As such if you impliment a VA/IDP interaction that scans systems and primes IDP to react appropriately then a score may 
be applied to each attack per system. There is a system out there that does this, let me know if you want more details.

Rich