Foundation Summary

In every Cisco IPS deployment, basic sensor configuration tasks enable you to effectively use your Cisco IPS to monitor and protect your network. This chapter focuses on the following topics:

• Sensor host configuration tasks

• Sensor interface configuration tasks

• Analysis engine configuration tasks

The basic sensor configuration tasks include the following:

• Configuring allowed hosts

• Configuring sensor user accounts

• Configuring the sensor's time parameters

• Configuring Secure Shell (SSH) hosts

The basic sensor interface configuration tasks include the following:

• Enabling monitoring interfaces

• Editing monitoring interface parameters

• Configuring inline interface pairs

• Configuring inline software bypass

• Configuring traffic flow notifications

When using inline processing, you can configure software bypass to operate in one of the following modes:

• Auto Bypass inspection when analysis engine is stopped

• Off Always inspect inline traffic

• On Never inspect inline traffic

Configuring traffic flow notifications involves customizing the following parameters to your network environment:

• Missed Packet Threshold

• Notification Interval

• Interface Idle Threshold

After configuring the interfaces on you sensor, you must also assign them to a virtual sensor before your sensor can use the interfaces to analyze network traffic.