VOCAL Technologies secure communication software provides a range of information security solutions including private and public key cryptography to ensure communications security over public and local networks. Our software is optimized for performance on all major processors and platforms. VOCAL’s security software may be licensed as source code or binary with custom solutions available to meet unique application requirements.
Dramatic change with respect to connectivity in the age of the Internet has posed serious challenges to developers of networking and communications devices, including those in the embedded world. Closed systems with proprietary communication protocols have given way to standards-based systems that may need to talk to virtually any IP-enabled device located anywhere in the world. Along with this comes a whole host of privacy and related vulnerability concerns that must be addressed. Systems must be built in accordance with industry standard security protocols and services, and must include a wide range of cryptographic techniques and algorithms that are required to implement them.
Cryptography can generally be divided into two broad categories: private key and public key cryptography. In private key cryptography, users share a secret key which is used to encrypt and decrypt messages. The primary difficulty lies in securely distributing the secret key, especially as the complexity and size of the network(s) scale upwards.
In contrast, public key cryptography involves the use of a public and private key pair. A user may freely distribute the public key but must always keep the private key secret. The concept behind public key cryptography is that of a one-way (or trapdoor) function f, where if given x, it is easy to compute f(x). However, if given f(x), it is not computationally practical to determine x.
The obvious advantage to public key cryptosystems is that there is no need to worry about key distribution. It is more flexible and as hardware advances make exhaustive searches faster, it is easy to simply select larger keys. With private key cryptographic methods, new keys must be generated and somehow disseminated. The disadvantage to public key cryptography is that it is necessarily slower and may also introduce added complexity as key length grows.
In actual practice, VOCAL employs both cryptographic types together in security systems to exploit the advantages of each. An example of one such process is a ‘digital envelope’. Private key cryptography is used to encrypt a message m, yielding ciphertext c. The secret key s is then encrypted using public key cryptography, yielding k. The encrypted message and key pair (c, k) may then be sent securely, where only the recipient may recover s from k. The secret key s may then be used to quickly decode ciphertext c, yielding original message m.
Customers today are concerned about ensuring the privacy of their communications, be it data, voice, and/or video. VOCAL security software can provide that assurance, as either an API or as a comprehensive system of encryption protocols. VOCAL’s security libraries include the following:
- Key Management – provisions made in a security system for the generation, exchange, storage, safeguarding, use, and replacement of keys.
- AKA – Authentication and Key Agreement
- AKE – Authenticated Key Establishment
- GDOI – Group Domain of Interpretation
- IKEv1 – Internet Key Exchange version 1
- IKEv2 – Internet Key Exchange version 2
- ISAKMP – Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol
- KEA – Key Exchange Algorithm
- KINK – Kerberized Internet Negotiation of Keys
- MIKEY – Multimedia Internet KEYing
- MOBIKE – IKEv2 Mobility and Multihoming Protocol
- OAKLEY – Key Determination Protocol
- PKI – Public Key Infrastructure
- PKINIT – Public Key Cryptography for Initial Authentication in Kerberos
- PKIX – Public-Key Infrastructure using X.509 Certificates
- PKM – Pairwise Key Management
- PSK – Pre-Shared Key
- SDES – Session Description Protocol Security Descriptions for Media Streams
- SKEME – A secure and versatile key exchange protocol for key management over Internet
- TEK – Token Encryption Key
- TKIP – Temporal Key Integrity Protocol
- ZRTP – Media Path Key Agreement for Secure RTP (SRTP)
- Secure Communications – messages passed in such a way as to keep them secret from anybody except the intended reciever.
- CCMP – Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol
- DMS – Defence Messaging System
- DTLS – Datagram Transport Layer Security
- EAP – Extensible Authentication Protocol
- EAPoL – EAP over LAN
- EAPoW – EAP over Wireless
- HTTPS – Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
- IPsec – Secure Internet Protocol
- MSP – Message Security Protocol
- SASL – Simple Authentication and Security Layer Protocol
- Secure SIP – Secure Session Initiation Protocol
- SRTP – Secure Real-time Transport Protocol
- SSH – Secure Shell Protocol
- SSID – Service Set Identification
- SSLv3/TLSv1 – Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security
- S-HTTP – Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
- TSN – Transitional Security Nertwork
- WEP – Wired Equivalent Privacy
- WiMAX Security – DES-CBC encryption/authentication and PKM
- WPA – Wi-Fi Protected Access
- WRAP – Wireless Robust Authentication Protocol
- WTLS – Wireless Transport Layer Security (TLS)
- XTLS – Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) traffic via an application-level usage of Transport Layer Security (TLS)
- Information Security – Methods to secure information.
- CMS – Cryptographic Message Syntax
- FTPS – File Transfer Protocol Secure
- JPSEC – Secure JPEG2000
- MSP – Message Security Protocol
- MOSS – MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Object Security Services
- PEM – Privacy Enhanced Mail
- PFS – Perfect Forward Secrecy
- PGP – Pretty Good Privacy
- Secure ACAP – Secure Application Configuration Access Protocol
- Secure COMedia – Secure Connection-Oriented Media Transport
- Secure COPS – Secure Common Open Policy Service
- Secure IMAP – Secure Internet Message Access Protocol
- Secure POP – Secure Post Office Protocol
- Secure SMTP – Secure Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
- SET – Secure Electronic Transaction
- SFTP – Secure File Transfer Protocol
- S/MIME – Secure / Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
- SNEWS – Secure Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
- Applied Security – Application of security methods and protocols.
