Best Solution for Scalable Security

B.

Option A: Set up an OCI Private Load Balancer and configure IDS/IPS related health checks at TCP and/or HTTP level to inspect traffic.

This option suggests setting up an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Private Load Balancer and configuring IDS/IPS health checks at the TCP and/or HTTP level. This Load Balancer acts as a front-end that receives traffic and forwards it to backend instances, which could be the compute instances running inside the VCN. The health checks can be configured to inspect the traffic and detect any suspicious activity. This option can provide horizontal scalability to the IDS/IPS system by adding more backend instances to the Load Balancer.

Advantages:

• The Load Balancer can provide horizontal scalability to the IDS/IPS system.
• The health checks at TCP and/or HTTP level can detect suspicious traffic.
• This option can be cost-effective as the Load Balancer pricing is based on the usage.

Disadvantages:

• The Load Balancer does not provide direct access to the network traffic flowing through the VCN. It only forwards traffic to backend instances for inspection.
• This option requires configuring IDS/IPS health checks, which could add complexity to the solution.

Option B: Configure autoscaling on a compute instance pool and set vNIC to promiscuous mode to collect traffic across the VCN and send it to the IDS/IPS platform for inspection.

This option suggests configuring an autoscaling compute instance pool and setting the Virtual Network Interface Card (vNIC) to promiscuous mode to collect traffic across the VCN. The collected traffic can be sent to an IDS/IPS platform for inspection. Autoscaling can help provide horizontal scalability to the IDS/IPS system by adding more compute instances to the pool when needed.

Advantages:

• Autoscaling can provide horizontal scalability to the IDS/IPS system.
• This option provides direct access to the network traffic flowing through the VCN.
• This option can be cost-effective as it uses existing compute instances.

Disadvantages:

• Setting the vNIC to promiscuous mode can affect network performance and increase latency.
• Configuring autoscaling and vNICs can add complexity to the solution.

Option C: Configure each host with an agent that collects all network traffic and sends that traffic to the IDS/IPS platform for inspection.

This option suggests configuring each compute instance running inside the VCN with an agent that collects network traffic and sends it to an IDS/IPS platform for inspection. This approach can provide direct access to the network traffic flowing through the VCN and can be more precise in detecting suspicious activity.

Advantages:

• This option provides direct access to the network traffic flowing through the VCN.
• This approach can be more precise in detecting suspicious activity.

Disadvantages:

• Configuring each compute instance with an agent can add complexity to the solution.
• This option may not be scalable to thousands of compute instances as the overhead of collecting and sending network traffic to the IDS/IPS platform can increase with the number of instances.

Option D: There is no need to implement an IPS/IDS system as traffic coming over IPSec VPN tunnels is already encrypted.

This option suggests that the traffic coming over the IPSec VPN tunnels is already encrypted, and there is no need to implement an IDS/IPS system. However, encryption does not guarantee protection against all types of attacks, and an IDS/IPS system can provide additional security measures to detect and prevent malicious activity.

Advantages:

• None.

Disadvantages:

• Encryption does not guarantee protection against all types of attacks.
• Not implementing an IDS/IPS system can leave the organization vulnerable to security threats.

Conclusion: Option A and Option B are the most suitable solutions for implementing an IDS/IPS system on OCI. Option A provides horizontal scalability through the use of a Load Balancer and IDS/IPS health checks,