The following critearias could be helpful when IDSes have to be evaluated. The products which are on the market today are undergoing rapid changes in features and all the evaluations that have been published are more or less out of date. A catalogue of criterias might help to make a decision whether to buy a product or not.
The list ist not at all complete and can certainly be extended!
User Interface
Ease of Signature tuning
Data presentation
Sensor Engine
Packet drop rate (i.e., throughput)
Signature quality (How to measure this criteria is under heavy discussion and not at all an easy issue!)
Open signature format (i.e., user can see, change and add signatures)
Support of third-party signatures (e.g., snort-signatures)
