Nowadays maintaining security in the networking domain is very important and essential since the network is hacked by the unauthorized people. There are various strategies and mechanism have been applied which provide the security to some extent. Most of these security mechanisms principles are similar to encryption and firewall. Even though this mechanism provides security, but these strategies are failed to detect the intrusions in which there is a need for development of new technology and it is known as Intrusion detection system. The Intrusion detection systems are used to identify the problems like unauthorized use, misuse and abuse of computer networking systems. Outside attackers are not only the problem, the threat of authorized users misusing and abusing their privileges is an equally pressing concern. Intrusion detection systems are used to analyze the event occurrence in a system with the goal to indicate security issues. An intrusion detection system display networked units and appears for anomalous or malicious conduct within the patterns of exercise within the audit stream.This paper studied the basic concepts of intrusion detection, its need, components and challenges.