Snort 3 – Flexible, Modular Intrusion Detection That Speaks Modern Traffic What is Snort 3 Snort 3 is the latest iteration of one of the most established intrusion detection and prevention systems out there. Originally built as a packet sniffer with signature-based alerting, Snort has evolved into a full-blown modular IDS/IPS engine. This version — Snort 3 — brings real architectural improvements: dynamic pipelines, better scalability, and a Lua-based configuration system that replaces the old c

OSSEC – Host-Based Intrusion Detection That’s Still Holding Its Ground What is OSSEC OSSEC is a classic open-source HIDS — Host-based Intrusion Detection System. Unlike network IDS tools like Snort or Suricata, OSSEC focuses on what’s happening on the systems themselves. It watches for file changes, unauthorized user activity, privilege escalation, suspicious logs — and can even take automated actions when needed.

It’s been around since the early 2000s, and while newer tools like Wazuh have bui

Wazuh – One Platform to Watch Them All What It Is (and Why People Use It) Security monitoring can get complicated — too many tools doing too many things, none of them really talking to each other.
Wazuh tries to fix that.

It started off as a fork of OSSEC but quickly grew into something bigger: a full-blown, open-source SIEM and XDR platform that pulls logs, monitors files, checks integrity, detects anomalies, and responds — all from one interface.

The cool part? It doesn’t just handle endpoin

CrowdSec – Collaborative Intrusion Prevention for the Modern Internet What Is CrowdSec CrowdSec is an open-source, crowd-powered intrusion prevention system. Think of it as the spiritual successor to Fail2Ban — but with modern architecture, behavior-based detection, and a real-time threat-sharing network.

It monitors logs from services like SSH, NGINX, Apache, Postfix, and many others. When it sees suspicious activity — repeated login attempts, scans, abuse — it triggers local responses (firewa