In the internet and WAN connected environment of today, it is important to encrypt business-critical data in order to keep the data secure and reduce the risks of spying and snooping. Data breaches also include fiber tapping. With the continued increase of WAN bandwidth driven by video traffic, the online gaming industry and cloud services, we have seen the speed grow from 1 GB to 10 GB, to 40 GB, and now to 100 GB. With growing link speeds and a demand for bandwidth to continually increase, the traditional layer-3 encryption will not be enough to meet requirements.
The three most common methods for implementing encryption are as follows:
- IPsec, or Layer-3 (L3) encryption
- MACsec, or Layer-2 (L2) encryption
- Optical Network (OTN) or Layer-1 (L1) encryption