Question 88 - 312-38 discussion

A network intrusion detection system (NIDS) is an intrusion detection system that tries to detect malicious activity such as denial of service attacks, port scans or even attempts to crack into computers by monitoring network traffic. A NIDS reads all the incoming packets and tries to find suspicious patterns known as signatures or rules. It also tries to detect incoming shell codes in the same manner that an ordinary intrusion detection system does.

Answer option A is incorrect. A host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) produces a false alarm because of the abnormal behavior of users and the network.

A host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) is an intrusion detection system that monitors and analyses the internals of a computing system rather than the network packets on its external interfaces. A host-based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) monitors all or parts of the dynamic behavior and the state of a computer system. HIDS looks at the state of a system, its stored information, whether in RAM, in the file system, log files or elsewhere; and checks that the contents of these appear as expected. Answer option B is incorrect. An intrusion prevention system (IPS) is a network security device that monitors network and/ or system activities for malicious or unwanted behavior and can react, in real-time, to block or prevent those activities. When an attack is detected, it can drop the offending packets while still allowing all other traffic to pass.

Answer option C is incorrect. A demilitarized zone (DMZ) is a physical or logical subnetwork that contains and exposes external services of an organization to a larger network, usually the Internet. The purpose of a DMZ is to add an additional layer of security to an organization's Local Area Network (LAN); an external attacker only has access to equipment in the DMZ, rather than the whole of the network. Hosts in the DMZ have limited connectivity to specific hosts in the internal network, though communication with other hosts in the DMZ and to the external network is allowed. This allows hosts in the DMZ to provide services to both the internal and external networks, while an intervening firewall controls the traffic between the DMZ servers and the internal network clients. In a DMZ configuration, most computers on the LAN run behind a firewall connected to a public network such as the Internet.