Host Intrusion Detection System Administrator's Guide Release 3.1

Overview
Importance of Intrusion Detection
Chapter 1
4
Importance of Intrusion Detection
Some of the threats that are faced by almost all businesses today are:
• Loss of Financial Assets
• Loss of Intellectual Property
• Loss of Computing Resources
• Loss of Privacy
Loss of Financial Assets
Financial institutions are vulnerable to even trusted people. A similar threat exists in
the electronic sphere. With the advent of Internet technology, several financial
institutions transfer millions of dollars over computer networks. In addition to easy
access, this technology has made the whole financial industry vulnerable to security
attack.
Loss of Intellectual Property
Intellectual property refers to the unique knowledge or ideas about the technology the
company owns. Your intellectual property could be the design of a new engine, the code
to your latest product, or even your customer contact list. The company should handle
the intellectual property with atmost care. This is one of the challenges the companies
across world face today.
Loss of Computing Resources
Information is of no use if it cannot be acted upon, and not having the computing
resources available to process information renders it useless. Any company that offers its
customers an online service is acutely aware of the potential losses that can result from
even a minute of downtime. This is especially true in the case of web pages. Lack of
availability of critical computing resources because of malicious actions is a serious
threat faced by any company doing business on the Internet today: the loss of business
(measured in dollars) can be significant. Harder to quantify, but more damaging in the
long term, is the loss of consumer confidence in a business that suffers an online attack.
Another example of a loss of a critical computing resource is a corporate e-mail system
crash. When the outage is caused intentionally by an attacker who is continually
disrupting business, the financial cost to a company can be very high — lost sales or
miscommunication with customers, for example.
Loss of Privacy
One of the real concerns is about privacy, for example, in the medical, insurance and
banking fields. If a computer system is broken into by an outside attacker, sensitive data
may be obtained that could leave you liable to legal action because of a lack of due
diligence on your part to protect sensitive data.