Virtual Private Network
Virtual Private Network
VPN or virtual private networks allow multiple sites from an organization (and its clients, suppliers, etc.) to communicate securely over an insecure internet by encrypting all communication between the sites.
IPSec protocol is the Internet standard protocol for tunneling, encryption and authentication. IPSec can be used to protect the path between a pair of security gateways
IPSec is designed to protect the network traffic by addressing basic issues like:
Access control: This is controlling the access to the remote host machines from the local hosts. This also involves local host access control, where the system administrators can control which local hosts can communicate to the remote hosts through the local IPSec gateways.
Data integrity: This makes sure that the data that is transferred from one IPSec gateway to another IPSec gateway is not tampered (changed).
Authentication of IPSec peers: This ensures that an IPSec peer is communicating with the proper remote IPSec peer. So it involves authenticating the remote IPSec peer.
Protection against replays: An intermediate person between any two communicating IPSec peers can spoof the packet, tamper it and then repeatedly send it to any of those IPSec gateways, thus causing Denial – of – Service attack. So IPSec has the capability to prevent this attack.
Traffic Confidentiality: This involves encrypting the data so that a third person cannot peek in through the data.
IPSec provides the securing services at IP layer, offering protection for IP and upper layer protocols. The security services are provided through the use of the following protocols
Cryptographic key management procedures and protocols, including the Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP) and the Internet Key Exchange protocol (IKE). In order to use IPSec, both the communicating peers need to have the same protocol, encryption algorithms and keys. IKE provides the mechanism for a pair of IPSec entities to negotiate security services and their associated session authentication and encryption keys.
Security protocols such as the Authentication Header (AH) and the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP). The Authentication Header (AH) addresses data origin authentication, data integrity, and replay protection. The Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) header has the same capabilities as AH in addition to data confidentiality and encryption. IPSec uses the AH by default. If data confidentiality is desired, ESP can be used, which has the additional encryption feature.
Dlink | 49 |