In the coming months, OIT will deploy Intrusion Prevention Systems, or IPS, onto the campus network. These systems will monitor traffic entering and leaving the campus network and proactively block recognized attacks. The IPS will replace Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) that have monitored the network for several years, but relied upon manual intervention to stop malicious traffic.

Following a lengthy Request for Proposal process, OIT has selected systems from 3Com/Tipping Point for the campus network. Deployed at a number of large universities around the country, this product has received high praise for its ability to operate on high speed networks, recognize a large variety of attacks, and minimize mistakenly blocked legitimate traffic.

At any given moment, computers from around the world are attempting to probe systems on campus looking for vulnerabilities that can be exploited. With the IPS in place, the university will have an additional layer of cyber security.