What is an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)?

Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)

An Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) builds upon IDS technology by not only detecting threats but also taking active measures to block or prevent attacks from succeeding.

IPS devices inspect network traffic in real-time and can drop malicious packets, reset connections, or block specific traffic patterns. IPS solutions are often deployed in line with firewalls to provide an additional layer of defense.

Like IDS, IPS can use both signature-based and anomaly-based detection methods. It is particularly useful in defending against fast-moving attacks, such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) and zero-day exploits.