Intrusion Detection Systems: Advantages and Disadvantages of Alert-Based Design

Advantages:

1. 'Early Detection': This design ensures that any suspicious activity is detected early and alerted to the administrator, which can help prevent security breaches.

2. 'Customization': Administrators can customize the IDS to fit their specific needs and requirements, which can increase the accuracy of the alerts generated.

3. 'Better Visibility': By generating alerts for every action, the IDS provides a comprehensive view of system activity, which can help administrators identify patterns and trends in attacks.

Disadvantages:

1. 'False Positives': As the IDS is tuned to ignore common, benign activities, there is a risk of generating false positives for suspicious activity, which can lead to alert fatigue for the administrator.

2. 'Time-Consuming': The process of adjusting the IDS to ignore common activities can be time-consuming and require constant monitoring, which can divert resources from other security tasks.

3. 'Incomplete Coverage': There is a risk that the IDS may miss some attacks if the administrator does not properly tune the system or if attackers change their tactics.