Cyber threat is growing on par with the advancements in the field of co mputer technology and information age which makes Intrusion detection Systems (IDSs) to get a lot of attention now a days. IDS is an evolv ing research area in the field of cyber security, which is aimed to detect cyber-intrusions. The authors have surveyed many research papers on IDS in the resent past and the essence of their survey is presented in this paper by keeping in thought of helping research scholars in the area of IDS. This paper aims at p resenting brief description of IDS and mach ine learning approach for its imp lementation. Though lot of literature survey on IDS exist, in this paper authors attempt to present a clear picture of IDS in all aspects through their extensive survey.