Welcome to The Tao of Network Security Monitoring: Beyond Intrusion Detection . The goal of this book is to help you better prepare your enterprise for the intrusions it will suffer. Notice the term will. Once you accept that your organization will be compromised, you begin to look at your situation differently. If you"ve actually worked through an intrusion-;a real compromise, not a simple Web page defacement-;you"ll realize the security principles and systems outlined here are both necessary and relevant. This book is about preparation for compromise, but it"s not a book about preventing compromise. Three words sum up my attitude toward stopping intruders: prevention eventually fails . Every single network can be compromised, either by an external attacker or by a rogue insider. Intruders exploit flawed software, misconfigured applications, and exposed services. For every corporate defender, there are thousands of attackers, enumerating millions of potential targets. While you might...