IPsec, the Future of Network Security?

Abstract

This master thesis deals with Internet security in general and IPsec in particular. Traffic and transactions over the Internet are risky, and credit card numbers are easily stolen and abused. IPsec has been developed to ensure security and integrity and we discuss how IPsec works and where in the computer network it resides. In order to come up with any conclusions and results, we did a literature research of the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Request For Comments (RFC) documents on the Internet. The few books available are also built upon the RFCs. The study found that IPsec will provide security for all kinds of computer traffic without, or with little, human interaction. IPsec can replace current application security techniques like PGP etc. Since IPsec is built in a modular way it is future proof and it is easy to add new cryptographic methods when such are developed and proven more secure.