The Intrusion Protection System (IPS)
Step 1
This paper aims to discuss an airline organization’s website that holds personal data, flight information, flight numbers, and partly financial information when necessary. Through the organization’s website, a traveler can book for flights and obtain a boarding pass, which relays information, including the passenger’s legal name, airline name, seat assignment, departure and arrival information, departure time, and other fundamental details. Other relevant information shared with the public and clientele over the chosen website includes possible flight offers, contact details, change of flight information, and business information, such as emerging operational collaborations. To arrive at convincing conclusions, the assignment might involve roaming over other organizations’ websites within the same industry to obtain related data and make necessary comparisons.
Step 2
The Intrusion Protection System (IPS) presents the best protection approach to be used for this assignment. The protection technology is preferable and highly relevant because of its ability to detect, log, and effectively block known intrusions or anomalous network activities into a sensitive network such as an airline’s website. Further, the IPS technology is commendable because it keeps an eye on a website and its hosting network for any malicious and suspecting activities that attempt to exploit a known vulnerability. The intrusion prevention system technique will work by actively scanning any shared website and network traffic for vicious actions and known threat patterns. The IPS can conveniently analyze the website traffic and continuously compare the bit-stream with other internal and associated signature databases for impending attack attempts (Zineddine, 2018). Ultimately, suspicious website traffic can be rerouted to alternative networks, for example, a honeypot.
Step 3
Busy and high-traffic networks such as an airline website are prone to regular intrusions. Zineddine (2018) posits that network intrusions are all unauthorized activities on a computer system, a network, or a website. On many occasions, unwanted activities absorb the limited network resources intended for use by authorized users and nearly always pose threats to the network’s security or data. A network Intrusion Detection System is critical for network and website security because it allows the administrators and organizational managers to detect and correctly respond to malicious traffic. IPS’ fundamental benefit is to ensure that the website administrators and organizational personnel are promptly notified and advised when a threat or network intrusion might be occurring.
The IPS technology typically records information associated with observable events, notifies the relevant security administrators of the critical observed events, and produces a report (Kim, Aminanto, & Tanuwidjaja, 2018). Most IPS technologies are advantageous because they are enhanced further to respond to an observed attack or threat by preventing it from actualizing its threats. IPS technologies use multiple response techniques, which involve the innovation barring attacks by itself, altering the threat’s content, or changing the security environment. Keeping the network free from intrusion should the airline’s management’s most crucial task undertaking to ensure that online booking and passengers feel secure. If malicious attackers penetrate the network, the activity will likely lead to massive losses for the organization, including possible data breaches, potential downtime, and loss of customer trust. IPS technologies are ordinarily installed behind the firewall but on the edge of the network. However, multiple IPS approaches can be deployed across the entire network to handle intra-host traffic or threats.
Intrusion protection or prevention systems will offer ongoing protection for the airline organization’s data and associated technological resources. These advanced security techniques will operate within the firm and make up for blind spots available within its traditional security measures implemented by antivirus and firewall systems. Examples of the most common and best IPS tools include Data-dog Real-time Threat Monitoring and Solar-Winds security Event Manager. The former is available for a free trial and operates as an add-on to cloud-based networks to perform threat detection while monitoring network behavior and device operations (Kim, Aminanto, & Tanuwidjaja, 2018). Other examples include Splunk, a widely used network analysis tool with unique prevention features, and Sagan that mines log files for event data. All these tools are available for use on Linux and Windows platforms and in the Cloud. Lastly, the Open Source HIDS Security is a highly recommended and respected IPS technology free to use. The system runs on Linux, Windows, Unix, and Mac Operating System but lacks a user interface (Patent Issued for Proactive Intrusion Protection System, 2019).
To realize the benefits and the full power of an IPS protection strategy, the airline firm must first overcome various challenges, for example, ensuring effective deployment of the system, integrating the IPS in the already existing network, and operating within a distributed environment. Additionally, the strategy has challenges associated with managing the high volume of alerts. Understanding and investigating the alerts and knowing how to respond to the alerts or threats correctly. However, these challenges can be addressed by instituting and customizing the right web and network administration team and embracing technological advancements.