Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) are in-line security controls that inspect network traffic and automatically stop threats. If you’re asking what is Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), it’s the policy-enforcing counterpart to IDS: IPS not only detects suspicious activity—it blocks it in real time.
We often see security teams place IPS at internet edges, data center cores, and cloud gateways to contain exploits before they reach protected workloads. Modern IPS blends signatures, behavior analytics, and threat-intel, and can decrypt, inspect, and re-encrypt TLS traffic where policy allows.
Key capabilities include:
- Exploit & malware prevention: Drop packets, reset sessions, and apply virtual patching.
- Application/context awareness: Enforce rules by app, user, and location.
- Automation & integrations: Tie into SIEM/SOAR and coordinate with EDR/XDR.
- Compliance & reporting: Produce evidence for audits and track effectiveness.
Our take? IPS turns detection into decisive action—shrinking dwell time and blast radius.
Choosing between detection only and active blocking? Explore our Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS) Guide for placement patterns, tuning tactics, and how to pair IPS with EDR/XDR for true defense-in-depth.
