What is the best possible IDS deployment for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system?

What is the best possible IDS deployment for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system?

Do you have any recommendations for the best possible IDS deployment for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    SearchSecurity.com members gain immediate and unlimited access to breaking industry news, virus alerts, new hacker threats, highly focused security newsletters, and more -- all at no cost. Join me on SearchSecurity.com today!

    Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSecurity.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSecurity.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

There really aren't any special circumstances that would make an IDS deployment for an ERP any different from any other IDS deployment. I'm assuming that your ERP is in a data center protected by a firewall and that the application and database servers may even be in separate firewall zones.

In that case, I would suggest deploying an IDS with the ability to monitor each of your network segments. Resources permitting, it's a good idea to have the ability to see into each of your zones. This will allow you to monitor traffic that passes between devices within the same zone and never reaches the firewall. Depending upon your data center architecture, it may even be possible to use a SPAN port to provide traffic from more than one zone to the same IDS sensor or network interface card (NIC).

Also consider deploying some intrusion prevention system (IPS) functionality. For more information, read my recent tip entitled "Network intrusion prevention systems: Should enterprises deploy now?".

More information:

This was first published in February 2008