Secure Communication

The basis of secure communication is requiring authentication with encryption. Authentication helps ensure that the source and destination are the intended parties. Encryption codes the communication at the source and decodes it at the target to prevent intruders from reading any transmissions that they might manage to intercept. The Solaris operating environment features for secure communication include the following:

• Sun^TM Enterprise Authentication Module (SEAM) – A client/server architecture that provides encryption with authentication. See Chapter 6, Introduction to SEAM.

• Internet Protocol Security Architecture (IPsec) – An architecture that provides IP datagram protection including confidentiality, strong integrity of the data, partial sequence integrity (replay protection), and data authentication. See “IPsec (Overview)” in System Administration Guide: IP Services.

• Solaris Secure Shell – A protocol for protecting data transfers and interactive user network sessions from eavesdropping, session hijacking, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Strong authentication is provided through public key cryptography. X windows services and other network services can be tunneled safely over Secure Shell connections for additional protection. See Chapter 4, Using Secure Shell (Tasks).