RE: IDS and NMS

[David Markle <davidmarkle () comcast net>]

I am not sure that I completely follow your question, but here goes:

There are a few options that are available to you.

As far as sharing the monitoring segment with an NMS system, one could use
an aggregation type switch to collect all of the span'd or tapped segments
you monitor, then pass them out several monitor ports to the NMS and IDS
simultaneously.  Several options are available.  I like the Cisco 4006 CatOS
switch because it provides for 1.) the ability to assign collection ports as
"span ingress" ports (minimizing loops) and 2.) it supports up to 5 "egress"
span ports.  This unit collects all the monitor traffic and sends parts or
all of the traffic to the monitoring hosts.

With respect to your NMS question, Some NMS companies are now combining
their efforts with IDS.  Take for instance Niksun.  They now offer a Snort
add in to do IDS as well as the NMS.  I assume that they use the same
monitoring infrastructure on the back end.

Finally, there are many IDS systems (like Snort, Dragon, etc.) that will
support native SNMP to a backend SNMP monitor (i.e. Openview, Tivoli, etc.).

So, ultimately, the decision depends on your infrastructure, the amount of
$$ you want spend, and how and who monitors/managed the IDS
analysis/monitoring and NMS analysis/monitoring.

Hope I answered your questions.

Thanks.

David Markle

-----Original Message-----
From: Mayank-Bhatnagar [mailto:mayank () ncb ernet in]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 11:21 AM
To: focus-ids () securityfocus com
Subject: IDS and NMS


hi folks,

Well there is this issue that I would like to put to the group.
"Requirement of an interface of an IDS with an already installed Network
Management System".

Let me state it like this, If we have a managed IDS product it might have
its own management console and its own
configurations, server etc.

However an organisation which is running a NMS might wish to incorporate
IDS, its features on the NMS itself and might
not wish to invest on another Management Console.

There are some products like HP-OPen View which incorporate IDS in their
feature set.But this scenario is different
in the sens that one has build a NMS and also provided IDS functionality
using SNMP. The other case is where an independent
 IDS solution (independent of SNMP), getting incorporated in a NMS.

How much is this a viable solution or whether such requirement could exist,
and if yes, what could be implications of same?
As far as I know, top notch IDS products dont have any integration with NMS,
Some do send traps (which could be a
minimal part of IDS ie sending alerts to IDS management console as well as
NMS)

Hope I am clear enough.....

Waiting for some views......

thanks and regards,
Mayank




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