Specifications

10 Barracuda Load Balancer Administrator’s Guide
Intrusion Prevention System
Many security technologies are integrated into the Barracuda Load Balancer. The set-and-forget
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) helps secure your network, even if you may have missed a patch
or if an exploit manages to get past your existing security. The Barracuda Load Balancer will
automatically block any exploits that are detected across any protocol; no configuration is required.
The built-in IPS also provides Denial of Service (DoS) protection for all load-balanced servers.
There are important differences between an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and an IPS. An IDS
and an IPS are similar conceptually; however, an IDS merely alerts and can become a significant
source of incoming messages during an attack. An IPS, on the other hand, is capable of rejecting a
connection before damage is done. This makes it much less noisy in that it does not alert on every
attempt, and instead will simply block any malicious activity.
As with any security feature, IPS is designed to complement any existing security measures, not
replace them. The role of the Intrusion Prevention System is to eliminate any damage from an attack
that manages to penetrate the existing security architecture.
The Intrusion Prevention System protects all your load-balanced services from the following common
threats:
• Virus propagation
• Buffer overflows
• Protocol-specific attacks. The Barracuda Load Balancer contains protocol-specific guards that
protect your Real Servers from attacks targeting the SMTP, DNS, and LDAP protocols.
• Application-specific attacks. The Barracuda Load Balancer protects common applications that
are particularly vulnerable to external attacks. These applications include IIS, Websphere, Cold
Fusion, Exchange, and many more.
• Operating system-specific attacks. The Barracuda Load Balancer contains Microsoft and UNIX-
specific detection capabilities that identify malicious activity against these operating systems.
The Intrusion Prevention System is updated with the latest threats every hour by Energize Updates.
The following figure shows how Barracuda Central provides the latest rules and definitions through
the Energize Update feature.