Intrusion Prevention used to something that companies and corporation could put off for a few years because there were more pressing network security matters. Up until the year 2000, the Y2K problems were the biggest cause of worry. Millions of programming hours were spent going through every network and piece of software available to fix Y2K. In the end the job got done because corporations realized the size and the scope of the treat in time. Now is the time to worry about Intrusion Prevention.

Most offices these days are secure against viruses and Trojans. Offices have anti-virus software and firewalls which provide and adequate defense against viruses, worms, and Trojans which enter via email or messenger programs. Unfortunately offices are not equipped against Denial of Service Attacks and are in critical need of intrusion prevention. Intrusion Prevention is the only way to stop hackers in real time from attacking your network.

In 2003 there were over 4200 denial of service attacks. These attacks shut down websites and denied thousands of companies' access to their clients and services. Conversely clients and customers are denied access to the services offered by these companies. The rate of attack occurrences is doubling every year, making the need for intrusion prevention more and more important.

Intrusion prevention is best done by application front end hardware. This intrusion prevention hardware acts intelligently monitoring and analyzing web traffic. The intrusion prevention software also sits between your network and the internet acting as an extra layer of protection between the two. By monitoring traffic in real time, intrusion protection hardware can stop an attack before it does damage. The leader in intrusion prevention hardware is Radware.

To see more about how intrusion prevention hardware works, visit http://www.radware.com/content/products/apsolute_os/default.asp to see lots of informational data and flash animations for those who aren't network experts.