A comprehensive survey on network intrusion detection techniques

Abstract

In recent years, network attacks have become a problem of utmost importance which greatly affects the availability of information, security and the correctness for the individuals as well as businesses and government corporations. The problem has increased manifold with the widespread use of the internet and due to the need to provide services to the end users at all times. I it is impossible to develop foolproof systems that can stop intrusions but solutions exist to meet the challenges regarding information security and its integrity. One of the solutions is to install a firewall but it is not a fail-safe system since it cannot block the ports which remain open in order to provide standard network services to the users. Therefore, it cannot completely guard the network against the intrusion attempts. Another solution is to employ a network intrusion detection system (NIDS) along with a firewall, which can successfully detect and stop intrusion detection attempts. In this paper, a survey of network intrusion detection systems is presented. Various aspects regarding the deployment of these systems in real life scenarios are analyzed and the main factors which are responsible for the non-deployment of some of these innovative methods for practical use today are identified.