Testing your IPS & IDS Environment:
Penetration Testing your Intrusion Detection Prevention Systems

Network intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) and their architectures are often deployed without performing systems or architectural testing. Testing is required to provide assurance that the systems work as advertised in addition to their tactical positioning within the infrastructure they are attempting to defend.  Depending on the deployment model, IDPS can be passive or active and can impact your organization and its business objectives. It is critical that systems, once deployed, should perform the functions required by the business. Any IDPS system should be part of the organizational security policy by clearly demonstrating its role in the protection of information assets.

If you are currently working with IDPS or are evaluating products, penetration testing can help you understand the strengths and limitations of your systems and their architecture.

Testing IPS and IDS effectiveness
Exploits are developed on a constant basis to circumvent, target and defeat intrusion detection and prevention systems. It is critical for your organization to understand the various techniques attackers will utilize to achieve their goals. Penetration testing provides the information required to understand the attack vectors, tools, techniques and technologies that can make the difference in any attack.  It allows you to perform controlled, systematic attempts to bypass and identify weaknesses in your IDPS technology and deployment.  This permits you to efficiently and effectively understand how your system can be circumvented before attackers do.

Effectively Architect Your IPS Environment
To be deployed successfully any IDPS must be tailored to your specific needs and operational environment. This can only be achieved through direct and active testing.

Utilizing iVOLUTION Security for this portion of testing provides you with the skills to efficiently architect and design your IDPS infrastructure. iVOLUTION Security empowers you with a professionally developed framework that leverages our skills and exploit techniques to demonstrable IDPS effectiveness as well as potentially critical weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Bypassing an IDPS can be effortless (as simple as leveraging encryption technologies) or complex (manually writing exploit code with advanced technical knowledge and skills). A penetration test against your IDS or IPS infrastructure using these techniques enables you to deploy real-world exploits and advanced traffic shaping and modification techniques, such as fragmentation, overlap and encryption to expose the weaknesses in your IDPS.

ROI and IDPS
An effective IDPS solution may require considerable investments and resources. Organizations should be prepared to technically evaluate a chosen solution, both prior to purchase and after deployment. Any deployed system must be sure to deliver value. Penetration testing safely allows you to create real-world intrusion events to effectively measure the systems deployed and the return on security investment.

Your Security Investments
iVOLUTION Security and our team of professionals can help you verify your organization's security posture. We can provide a security baseline and detailed information about definite, tangible, real-world threats to your information assets. This allows any organization to make effective budget decisions to leverage the time, effort and financial resources that must be addressed in any security investment.
The real world is always on.