Source fire Sourcefire 3D System Installation Manual page 8

C 1
HAPTER
I S 3D
NTRODUCTION TO THE OURCEFIRE
S
YSTEM
The Sourcefire 3D® System combines the security of an industry-leading
network intrusion protection system with the power to control access to your
network based on detected applications, users, and URLs. You can also use
Sourcefire appliances to serve in a switched, routed, or hybrid (switched and
routed) environment; to perform network address translation (NAT); and to build
secure virtual private network (VPN) tunnels among the virtual routers on
Sourcefire managed devices, or from managed devices to remote devices or
other third-party VPN endpoints.
The Sourcefire Defense Center® provides a centralized management console and
database repository for the Sourcefire 3D System. Managed devices installed on
network segments monitor traffic for analysis.
Devices in a passive deployment monitor traffic flowing across a network, for
example, using a switch SPAN, virtual switch, or mirror port. Passive sensing
interfaces receive all traffic unconditionally and no traffic received on these
interfaces is retransmitted.
Devices in an inline deployment allow you to protect your network from attacks
that might affect the availability, integrity, or confidentiality of hosts on the
network. Inline interfaces receive all traffic unconditionally, and traffic received on
these interfaces is retransmitted unless explicitly dropped by some configuration
in your deployment. Inline devices can be deployed as a simple intrusion
prevention system. You can also configure inline devices to perform access
control as well as manage network traffic in other ways.
This installation guide provides information about deploying, installing, and setting
up Sourcefire appliances (devices and Defense Centers). It also contains
Version 5.2 Sourcefire 3D System Installation Guide 8