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Introducing Network Security Sensors
This section describes the McAfee
®
Network Security Sensors at a high-level and also describes the McAfee
®
M-1250/M-1450 Network Security Sensor (Sensor) in detail.
Sensors are high-performance, scalable, and flexible content processing appliances built for the accurate
detection and prevention of intrusions, misuse, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and network access
control(NAC) of hosts. When deployed at key access points, a Sensor provides real-time traffic monitoring to
detect malicious activity, and respond to the malicious activity as configured by the administrator.
After the Sensor is deployed and communication established, Sensors are configured and managed using the
McAfee Network Security Manager (Manager) server.
The process of configuring a Sensor and establishing communication with the Manager is described in the later
chapters of this guide. The Manager server is described in detail in the McAfee Network Security Platform Manager
Administration Guide.
Contents
About the M-1250/M-1450 Sensor
Physical description of the M-1250/M-1450 Sensor
About the M-1250/M-1450 Sensor
The M-1250 or the M-1450 Sensor provides effective network IPS functionality as well as Network Access
Control (NAC) of hosts.
The IPS functionality involves real-time detection and prevention of threats and known, zero-day, or encrypted
attacks. The Sensor can perform many types of attack responses, including generating alerts and packet logs,
resetting TCP connections, "scrubbing" malicious packets, and even blocking attack packets entirely before they
reach the intended target.
Network Access Control of hosts is regulating access to network resources based on host System Health level
(Standard/ DHCP NAC), identity of the user logged into the host (IBAC), or both. The Sensor also provides the
Hybrid NAC functionality where a host is first subjected to DHCP-NAC and then Standard NAC at different ports
of the same Sensor. For more information on the NAC functionality and configurations of the Manager, see the
NAC Administration Guide.
Throughout this guide the terms, 'Sensor' and 'M-1250/M-1450' refer to the M-1250 or the M-1450
Sensor in general.
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McAfee
®
Network Security Platform
M-1250/M-1450 Sensor Product Guide
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