No one is born a network security manager. Security personnel often migrate from the network side of the house and can face a steep learning curve. Many quickly find their hands full with an abundance of new responsibilities, including managing firewalls, worrying about e-mail security, testing and deploying software patches, securing Web caches and gateways and much more. The last thing network security managers need is more devices to manage and more management systems to learn.

But the disturbing rise in network attacks -- and the legal penalties for the loss of sensitive customer data -- means that network security managers must employ every potential tool in their arsenal to fortify their networks. Several years ago, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) were the newest weapon of choice. However, these systems are designed to detect, not block, attacks and the flood of alarms the IDS solutions generate tend to overwhelm already overstressed network security staff. More recently, the emergence of Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) has offered the promise of real-time, automated blocking of network attacks -- all without devouring the time and attention of security staff.

While IPS automation can help set security managers free to concentrate on more strategic network tasks, the truth is that not all IPS solutions feature the ease of management necessary to deliver on this promise. Surveys show that some IPS solutions can take a significant amount of time to set up, or include complex and time-consuming processes for making changes to security policies and profiles.

The manageability, or ease of use, of an IPS solution is a cornerstone of effective network-security management. There are four key components of IPS manageability to consider, including:

• Speed of initial set-up / time to network protection;
• Ease of ongoing management;
• Flexible management interfaces; and
• IPS management scalability

This paper will take a good hard look at each of these manageability components.