CIDS Operations and Functionality

CIDS is a network-based IDS system that uses both a director platform and network sensors. The director platform(s) are used to view alarms generated by the sensors, configure the sensors, and maintain the IDS environment. The sensor is the most critical component of Cisco’s IDS system because it monitors, analyzes, responds to, and reports intrusions to the director platform.

The basic operations and functionality of the CIDS can be described in the following five steps:

• Step 1 Monitoring

• Step 2 Analyzing

• Step 3 Communications

• Step 4 Centralized Alarm Display and Management

• Step 5 (Optional) Sensor Response