Detection Works Where Prevention Fails

Abstract

The ideal of any security system is to prevent an attack, but prevention is the hardest aspect of security to implement, and often the most expensive. To be practical as well as effective, almost all modern security systems combine prevention with detection and response, forming a triad that operates as an integrated system to provide dynamic security, resilient failure, and defense in depth. Audits (retrospective detection) and prediction (prospective attempts at detection) don’t produce the decisive real-time results that most people associate with security systems, but are extremely important in evaluating and thinking about ways to improve security systems.