What is this white paper about?
Fiber optic communication infrastructure used to be considered more secure than copper infrastructure, since it does not radiate and is more resilient to tapping. Recent years have shown that it is, in fact, quite simple to tap fiber optic cables and extract the data transmitting over them. As a result, the need for data security over DWDM links has increased, especially in financial and government institutions, critical infrastructure, data centers and service providers. Moreover, security requirements such as confidentiality, integrity and authentication have become mandatory in most industries.
Hackers and cyber attacks pose strategic threats to any enterprise. Fiber can be hacked using simple, available, tools and information is easily stolen. This has led to the realization that owning your own dark fiber infrastructure is no longer a guarantee for data security, and that security of the optical link itself is essential. Data encryption methods previously used only by military and intelligence services have become common practice in all data transfer networks across all platforms, in all industries.
The encryption solution ensures high security level of the fiber infrastructure by combining cryptographic protection of the service data flow, firewall, secured management protocols, password-protected role-based user authentication, and optical link power level monitoring. The solution resolves three major concerns in optical link security: confidentiality, data integrity, and authentication.