Key Management With IKE

The management of keying material for IPsec security associations (SAs) is called key management. Automatic key management requires a secure channel of communication for the creation, authentication, and exchange of keys. Oracle Solaris uses Internet Key Exchange version 1 (IKE) to automate key management. IKE easily scales to provide a secure channel for a large volume of traffic. IPsec SAs on IPv4 and IPv6 packets can take advantage of IKE.

IKE can take advantage of available hardware acceleration and hardware storage. Hardware accelerators permit intensive key operations to be handled off the system. Key storage on hardware provides an additional layer of protection.