This article demonstrated Snort installation and operation in three primary modes. It is very important to be able to replicate these simple activities before considering deploying Snort as part of an enterprise-level IDS, or even to tell Snort to start logging traffic to a database or other format. In future articles we'll move beyond this initial foray into productive deployment scenarios.
Snort: Fundamentals and installation tips for the channel
Packet logger mode
Intrusion detection mode
About the author
Richard Bejtlich is founder of TaoSecurity, author of several books on network security monitoring, including Extrusion Detection: Security Monitoring for Internal Intrusions, and operator of the TaoSecurity blog (taosecurity.blogspot.com).