IDS: Re: Tuning false positives

[Devdas Bhagat <devdas () dvb homelinux org>]

On 28/12/05 11:37 +0530, Pukhraj Singh wrote:
> I agree with you on this point. Most products are prone to false
> positives in the production environment, when run in their default
> mode.  This highlights the lack of good QA testing methodology for the
> product. Most vendors rub their hands off after making signatures and
Aren't false positives often a result of organisational policy and
resulting network structure (or lack thereof)?

> protocols parsers. One thing they don't realize that QA is an equally
> important process because companies can't afford to drop (mission
> critical) sessions due to a false positives. I am afraid there's
Which is why most of them can run in IDS mode, and only alert. Tuning is
a must. 

A false positive due to a bad signature is a vendor QA failure.
A false positive due to the system not knowing what your network
policies are in the default state is user error.

What works on your network will not work on mine.

Devdas Bhagat

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