Intrusion Detection System with Suricata^®

An intrusion detection system (IDS) is an alert-based system that monitors and analyzes network traffic for evidence of malicious or unauthorized activity. When it detects malicious behavior, such as attempts to access restricted areas or exploit vulnerabilities in an endpoint or application, security teams receive a notification that can lead to direct response or further investigation. An IDS cannot remediate a security event on its own. Historically, intrusion detection systems have worked alongside intrusion prevention systems (IPS), which can actively block traffic or network packets, modify access control, or undertake other mitigation tactics.

Security teams reduce IDS false positives by regularly tuning, streamlining, and updating IDS rules and features, and by verifying alerts with network evidence so analysts can validate them quickly. The most serious risk from false positives arises when security teams become overwhelmed and can no longer distinguish between likely harmless alerts and those that demand investigation, whether they signal malicious activity or misconfigurations that hurt network performance. An excess of false positives shows that a security team's resources are stretched thin and that the organization's overall security posture is not where it should be. Taking these actions streamlines alerting systems and makes IDS and other security tools more efficient.

Intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) are cybersecurity tools that alert security teams to possible intrusions in company systems. People sometimes refer to intrusion prevention and detection as two parts of a single system (IDPS). Historically, however, many organizations have deployed one or the other, or treated IDS and IPS as separate but mutually reinforcing functions. An IDS cannot remediate a security event on its own.

While traditional IDS uses signature-based detection, some solutions have integrated anomaly and machine learning detections. Network Detection and Response (NDR), like network IDS, monitors network traffic, but it scans far more complex environments, including cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructure, network firewalls, SaaS, traffic from remote users, network taps, and servers. NDR lets security teams monitor lateral movement, making it far more likely to catch malicious actors who slipped past perimeter defenses by compromising remote accounts or devices. Most security teams need both for a best-in-class solution. Organizations can use NDR to pre-correlate core IDS detection capabilities, accelerating investigation and response across all SecOps teams.

Traditional IDS hands you an alert and leaves you to find the rest. Corelight pairs signature-based Suricata alerts with Zeek network evidence, then delivers that correlated package to your SIEM, XDR, or Investigator. Investigator’s Agentic Triage can also correlate Suricata alerts with detections from other Corelight detection layers, adding confidence to every alert. Each package carries a unique ID per entity, so analysts can find related data fast with basic queries. The outcome is faster triage, sharper investigation, and fewer alerts left unexplained, all within a single Open NDR Platform.