Secure Communication
The Challenge
More organization constructs their entire business plan around the Internet, both consumer and business partner relationships. So, the need for security is vital. Inaccuracy does not just mean a cash register shortage or an incorrect invoice. A hacker can easily "spot" a customers' sensitive information, including credit card numbers and account balances. As a result, secure communication protocols are the heart of making secure transactions over the Internet.
Problems of secure communication have been studied extensively in a multirecipient (multicast) model network. A “multicast channel” (such as Ethernet) allows one processor to send the same message—concurrently and secretly—to a permanent subset of processors. If there are n multicast lines between a sender and a receiver and there are at most t malicious processors, then the condition n>t is needed and enough for achieving efficient and probably a reliable and private communication.
However, nowadays even in simple communication scheme like SMS (Text messaging), the number of sent and received messages per day exceeds the population of the whole planet. Based on this direct fact, secure communication plays a major role to make sure sensitive and confidential information is protected and not viewable to a third-party eavesdropper. When two entities communicate, third party listener is unwanted. Message should be conveyed in such a way that nobody else could understand or even pick up the message. This is known as communicating in a secure manner. Secure communication means people can share information with varying degrees of certainty that third parties cannot know what was said.
Problems of secure communication have been studied extensively in a multirecipient (multicast) model network. A “multicast channel” (such as Ethernet) allows one processor to send the same message—concurrently and secretly—to a permanent subset of processors. If there are n multicast lines between a sender and a receiver and there are at most t malicious processors, then the condition n>t is needed and enough for achieving efficient and probably a reliable and private communication.
However, nowadays even in simple communication scheme like SMS (Text messaging), the number of sent and received messages per day exceeds the population of the whole planet. Based on this direct fact, secure communication plays a major role to make sure sensitive and confidential information is protected and not viewable to a third-party eavesdropper. When two entities communicate, third party listener is unwanted. Message should be conveyed in such a way that nobody else could understand or even pick up the message. This is known as communicating in a secure manner. Secure communication means people can share information with varying degrees of certainty that third parties cannot know what was said.
The Solution
Quantiq provides a secure solution that will provide secure communications through encryption to help protect sensitive files, data, and passwords. It protects communications from IP spoofing, IP source routing, DNS spoofing, interception of clear text passwords and date, manipulation of data by intermediate hosts and attacks from spoofed connections to an X11 server. In fact, the only thing an attacker can do is force it to disconnect from the host. Decryption, traffic play-back or hijacking the connection is not possible with this solution when using the encrypted communications.
It uses protocol which is the IETF standard for secure terminal access, and it is used by millions of administrators worldwide on a daily basis to replace Rlogin, Telnet, RSH, and other unsecured tools. It provides tools for interactive terminal access, executing remote commands, and performing baseline file transfer operations for all routine administrator tasks.
Secure Shell (SSH) is a secure way of transmitting data over TCP/IP networks from one computer to another. It utilizes strong encryption and authentication to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of the transferred data. Secure Shell is originally developed by SSH Communications Security and is today used by millions worldwide for secure system administration, secure file transfer, and secure application connectivity.
Figure 1. FTP in Secure Shell Tunnel
The client/server solution provides several methods for eliminating of the risks of plaintext File
Transfer Protocol (FTP). Protocol (SFTP) can be used to replace existing FTP clients and servers. It can be installed on server hosts to secure server-to-server connections, and it can connect to any standard Secure Shell server.
The solution uses client-server architecture. By default, the server listens to TCP port 22, which has been formally assigned for Secure Shell, and clients initiate connections to this port. The listener port can be altered in the server configuration. This client/server solution works with any type of Internet (TCP/IP) connection - ADSL, ISDN, modem, Ethernet, WLAN, PPPoE, totally independent of the network topology, and independent of network address translations or other features that may burden some other security solutions. It also provides mutual authentication for the server and the client user which makes it more sheltered.
The Benefit
- The platform is the most flexible, lucrative and compliant solution for executing, managing, and securing enterprise data transactions.
- It leverages the existing IT infrastructure and interoperates with other solutions. It also has out-of-the-box support for authentication frameworks such as X.509 PKI, Kerberos/GSSAPI, Windows domain authentication, RSA SecurID and Aladdin eToken.
- This enables you to gain the maximum return on existing IT investments and provides a low-cost path to security, compliance and manageability.