Hey I have a few more ideas:<br><br>1) rather than have the engine with all the signatures required for the environment for the everything it is watching why not be able to have directed rulesets? I.e say only process these rules for these networks or machines but don't do it for these. <br>
<br>For instance if there was a single sensor watching traffic to and from a network segment with a few Linux servers and windows clients, rather than enabling all the rules necessary I can say watch the necessary rules for windows while not applying the Linux rules and vice versa. i.e have netbios rules for <a href="http://192.168.1.0/24">192.168.1.0/24</a> network but not for hosts 192.168.1.40-45, that way uncessary rules are not applied on traffic going hosts/networks which don't need them. It may not be a good example for netbios due to specific ports that are used but in an IIS/Apache web farm for example it could be useful. <br>
<br>I think the best way to decide on this would be whitelist/blaclist approach so you can say apply these rules/rulesets to this entire network except for these hosts or say do not apply the ruleset to this network except for these hosts. That was a sensor watching a mixed network segment can apply the rules more accurately to the traffic.<br>
<br>2) suggestive rule tuning. i.e the sensor does not see any netbios traffic within a learning period, it can then say "no netbios traffic has been seen, do you wish to disable this ruleset" or something similiar like do you have windows machines?. Likewise if the sensor sees something that a ruleset/rule is not enabled for it can suggest it is enabled. This suggestive tuning could make it easier for new users to tune the system. This would lend itself well to a webgui/gui approach where an area could have suggested tuning options.<br>
<br><br>