Suricata

What it is

Suricata is a high-performance, open-source network threat detection engine developed with support from the Open Information Security Foundation (OISF). It can run as an intrusion detection system (IDS), an inline intrusion prevention system (IPS) and a network security monitoring (NSM) sensor, inspecting live traffic or offline packet captures with a rich rules language and protocol parsers.

What it helps with

- Detecting known threats and policy violations with community and commercial rule sets.
- Running inline IPS blocking where network design and rule policy allow.
- Producing protocol logs and metadata useful for NSM and threat hunting.
- Processing PCAP files for offline analysis and lab exercises.
- Integrating JSON and other outputs with SIEMs and data platforms.
- Deploying on Linux and related platforms common in security monitoring stacks.

Who it's for

Network security engineers, SOC teams and defenders who need an open-source IDS/IPS/NSM engine they can run on infrastructure they are authorised to monitor.

Worth knowing

Suricata source code is licensed under GPLv2 as documented by OISF. Rule packs may have separate licences and update models. Official project site and branding are published at suricata.io; documentation at docs.suricata.io. Use only on networks you are permitted to inspect. Attribution: framing from suricata.io and Suricata documentation.