Trusted Security Devices for Bandwidth Conservation in IPSec Environments

Information security a is constant concern of Internet data. One security solution is IPSec, which is a set of protocols that provides both data confidentiality and authenticity. Another concern is the last mile bandwidth limitation on many Internet connections. This problem can be mitigated by bandwidth conservation techniques such as Application Layer and Stealth Multicast (SMC). Combining IPSec and multicast techniques would be ideal, but is not possible due to the nature of encrypted data and the requirements of multicast messages. We present the concept of a Trusted Security Device (TSD) which provides efficient bandwidth usage while maintaining security levels offered by IPSec. A TSD cooperates with clients and servers while implementing SMC technology. Minor modifications to clients and servers are necessary to enable discovery, key exchange, and communication between clients, servers, and TSDs. TSD technology is applicable to streaming data where confidentiality, authentication, and bandwidth conservation are concerns.