As the Internet has developed, more and more enterprises are connected directly through the Internet. However, the IP protocol common on the Internet provides no security mechanism and many unreliable users and network devices may be connected. These disadvantages expose end users' service data to forging, tampering, and theft when traversing the Internet, which is composed of many smaller unknown networks. Therefore, a common IP-compatible network security solution is urgently needed.
To solve the preceding problems, Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) was developed to address some of the security flaws of IP. It works at the IP layer and provides transparent security services for IP network communication.
IPSec is a suite of protocols defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for providing secure transmission of data over IP networks. These protocols include the Authentication Header (AH) and Encapsulation Security Payload (ESP). The IPSec framework also includes key exchange and algorithms used for authentication and encryption.
These protocols allow two devices to establish an IPSec tunnel between them, so that data is securely forwarded over the IPSec tunnel.