Intrusion Detection Guide Wireless Network

With growing used of internet the threats attached to it are also growing. As more as many people are getting dependent on internet, hackers are inventing new ways to intrude into their systems and cause havoc for them. By intruding or by gaining unauthorized access to their computers, hackers can access confidential information or can simply destroy their system and derive sadistic pleasure out of it. Thus, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) have become need of the hour.

The large number of computers accessing internet and valuable information they contain has made it quintessential task to ensure wireless network security before establishing any kind of wireless network. Hackers can adopt different methods to breach wireless network security. Most common of them is by gaining unauthorized access to get information that is primarily private and confidential. This is very dangerous for a wireless network as this information can be misused or can be modified by hacker, which is also known as data diddling. This kind of modification of data can render all data stored on computers that are connected to a wireless network, to become useless. Thus, it can result in total chaos and disorder for any organization or individual. Some hackers may even delete data totally or may release a virus in wireless network that can corrupt all files on computers including those of the operating system, which can render a computer to be totally useless. Some other forms of wireless network security threats are remote login capability, SMTP hijacking, DNS, Macros and OS bugs.

Because of these multiplying threats, Intrusion Detection Systems are gaining popularity and have become an integral part of the overall business strategy of an enterprise. The main purpose of an Intrusion Detection System is to identify any passive or active and any internal or external activity that is hostile to a wireless network and then to alert the concerned system administrator and also block it as it happens. Thus, it detects any unauthorized access or misuse of a computer system and acts like a burglar alarm for a computer. Eventually many different Intrusion Detection Systems have been developed, however, detection schemes generally fall into one of two categories, anomaly detection or misuse detection. Anomaly detectors sort out the behavior that deviates from the normal system use. While on the other hand, misuse detectors look for behavior that matches a known attack scenario. Another sub-category of Intrusion Detection Systems is wireless network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS). These systems look out for suspicious activity and monitor the packets. wireless network Intrusion Detection Systems can monitor many computers at a time over a wireless network, while other intrusion detection systems may monitor only one.

Usually it is assumed that people outside the wireless networks try to break into them and gain access to private and confidential information. However, the truth may be different for a big corporate houses. Here, insiders pose a greater threat to the information and overall security of wireless network. This is because they have insider’s knowledge of workings of company.

Hence, though wireless network security threats are multiplying with size of wireless network, we can still secure our wireless networks by acting judiciously and by having the necessary Intrusion Detection Systems on our wireless networks.