Do you know what is IPsec?

Also known as the Internet Protocol Security or IP Security protocol.

IPsec is the suit of protocol that allows secure, encrypted communication between two computers in unsecure network. IPsec describes the framework for providing security at the Network layer of OSI model. It provides security through authentication and encryption of IP network packets.

IPsec has two goals

• To protect IP packets: For example, by setting up circuits using IPsec tunneling we     can secure data by using Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, for encrypt application layer data and routers for routing data
•  To defense against network attacks: If there is no security policy while transpiercing data, unauthorized user can access the data but, using of IPsec security policy the only authorize user can access data.

IPsec secures network traffic by using

•   Encryption
•  Decryption
•   Data signing

IPsec originally defined two mechanisms for imposing security on IP packets

•  Encapsulating Security Payload(ESP):Which defines method for encrypting data in IP packets.
•  Authentication Header(AH):Which defines the method for signing IP packets.

Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol is used to manage the cryptographic keys used by hosts for IPsec.

Working of IPsec

·         When user 1 wants to sends data to user 2 first IPsec will generated encrypted data and then generates encryption key and gives it to sender and receiver

·         Then after the receiving data user 2 can decrypt through the key and user 1 may access.

image for reference