Snort For Dummies

Welcome to Snort For Dummies. This book introduces you to the world
of detecting and responding to network and computer attacks using
the Snort intrusion detection system (IDS). Intrusion detection is a fascinating,
important, and sometimes harrying subject — after all, we’re talking
about someone trying to breach all the network defenses you have in place
and attack your computer systems! For network and systems administrators,
very little is more worrisome than network attacks. Fortunately, the goal of
intrusion detection is to remove some of that worry by letting you know
when an attack is in progress.
The Snort IDS is one of the most popular intrusion detection platforms available.
Snort is an open-source IDS solution, meaning that the source code is
free for anyone to use or modify. It’s released under the GNU General Public
License (GPL) open-source license, which means that it’s also free for anyone
to use. That’s right, it won’t cost you anything except time and computer
hardware. Interested? You should be. Used in conjunction with your firewall
and other layers in your security infrastructure, Snort helps you to detect
and respond to worms, system crackers, and other nasty beasts that aim to
take down your network and computer systems.
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is for you if you’re a network administrator, systems administrator,
information security manager, security consultant, or anyone interested in
finding out more about running a Snort intrusion detection system to watch
for attacks against your network.
About This Book
Snort For Dummies is a reference guide for installing, configuring, deploying
and managing Snort IDS sensors on your network. This book covers everything
from why you need an IDS, to installing Snort, to dealing with network
attacks, to deploying multiple Snort sensors. There are thousands of ways
that Snort can be deployed and a myriad of databases, logging systems, and
tools it works with. We focus on the tools and techniques that are widely
deployed and known to work best with Snort, all the while remaining generic
enough that the information should be helpful no matter what your situation.