Introduced over a decade ago, the first network intrusion prevention systems (IPS) were built on generic Intel servers with the purpose of blocking exploits that target vulnerable servers. Soon after, attacks against desktop clients emerged and the first generation of intrusion prevention products struggled to maintain performance and security. This led to a new hardware-accelerated generation of IPS that could inspect much more traffic and at higher speeds than could software-only solutions. Cybercriminals have grown more aggressive, increasingly targeting corporate assets, and the growing number of vulnerability disclosures in widely deployed operating systems and applications is a multi-faceted problem. The IPS is a mature technology that can be used to address these problems.

These next generation intrusion prevention systems (NGIPS) must provide organizations with the ability to identify both the applications and the users on their internal networks. As with their predecessors, NGIPS must protect the enterprise user against threats/exploits.