Hello! I was a little surprised when I read "When joining the list I ask you to breifly introduce yourself" since I never thought poeple would have the time to read messages like this...BTW, isn't the right spelling "briefly"? Anyway, I used to be a full-time OpenVMS (no flames, please :-) SysAdmin here at Abo Akademi University, but nowadays I'm doing that part-time, only. Today I'm more involved with networks (ATM) and network security (firewalls and encryption systems), things that are about to be introduced in our environment soon. I joined the list because of my interest in security in general, I hate to admit that from the list of Intrusion Detection Systems (that I received in the message I got when joining the list), I had only read about IDES. Well, Satan, of course, too... Regarding "...personal ideas that you have about what you think an intrusion detection system ideally, should be" I think I'll just try to get familiar with the stuff discussed on this list first. Cheers, HeGe Kaj Haggman Systems Manager Internet: Hege@abo.fi Phone: +358-21-2654467 Abo Akademi University Bitnet: Hege@finabo FAX: +358-21-2654497 Computing Center X.400: s=hege o=abo prmd=inet admd=fumail c=fi FIN-20500 Abo, FINLAND (Aussies might wonder about the word "Abo", but that's because I usually strip the special 8-bit letters we use here in Finland. There should actually be a dot above the "A" in "Abo". 'Nuff about that...)