With the advent of wireless networking and the expanded application of the technology in several domains that were until recently virtually non-existent, several opportunities have emerged for the intrusion prevention and detection industry with the challenge to come up with new products to address the security needs of the emerging wireless markets. Notable IPS vendors like Airtight Networks and Air defense have taken up to the airwaves to deliver wireless intrusion prevention products. And, with the expanding landscape and the insatiable appetite to develop new wireless applications and expand the areas of usage, we can only imagine that there is just the beginning and certainly this will define the trend in new products and technologies not just in the wireless intrusion prevention market space but also in the LAN-based markets. We present a foundational viewpoint from Denis Tsu, formerly of Airtight Networks and one of the leading experts in the industry.

On the traditional intrusion prevention front, Marty Roesch, Founder and CTO of SourceFire, Inc. in his podcast presentation takes us on a journey in the labyrinth of the “True Intrusion Prevention” domain.

Rohan Amin charts a course on how best to implement intrusion detection products to mitigate the issues that led Gartner to conclude that the intrusion detection system (IDS) market is dead. And by the way it has been more than six years since Gartner’s assertion, and the IDS industry is well alive and booming. It is evident that beyond prevention, detection holds a special place for forensics in computer and telecommunication systems.

Still on IDS, Marcus Ranum presents a Road Map on what is next in store and indeed the future direction of the intrusion detection industry. We also have special contributions from Joel Snyder of Opus1 on how best to select an IPS product and world-renowned forensics expert Anton Chuvakin presents issues of the moment on IntrusionBlog.

Also on this edition, we devote some attention to Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing has been touted by leading experts as a way of the future for organizations to save cost and offload extraneous services, etc. The concept and indeed the application of Cloud Computing is slowly gaining grounds in many circles. The technology savvy Obama administration is looking into ways of introducing and taping into the benefits of Cloud Computing in federal agencies. To date, a few agencies have introduced the concept although the usage and application are not entirely within the classical definition of the core concepts.

In an interview with Government Technology, Vivek Kundra called cloud computing a "huge opportunity" to remake intergovernmental IT relationships.

"For far too long we've been thinking very much vertically and making sure things are separated," he said. "Now we have an opportunity to lead with solutions that by nature encourage collaboration both horizontally and vertically."

Other leading experts and a systems integrator (Aquilent, Inc.) present their views on the State-of-Art and the challenges of Cloud Computing.

This Calendar Quarter (September – November, 2009) Guest Editor, Charles Iheagwara, an IT security practitioner with more than 10 years field experience, wrote a Ph.D. Dissertation on “The Effectiveness of Intrusion Detection Systems” and has published more than 40 papers in national and international technical and scientific editions.