Context-agile encryption for high speed communication networks

Different applications have different security requirements for data privacy, data integrity, and authentication. Encryption is one technique that addresses these requirements. Encryption hardware, designed for use in high-speed communications networks, can satisfy a wide variety of security requirements if the hardware implementation is key-agile, key length-agile, mode-agile, and algorithm-agile. Hence, context-agile encryption provides enhanced solutions to the secrecy, interoperability, and quality of service issues in high-speed networks. Moreover, having a single context-agile encryptor at an ATM aggregation point (such as a firewall) reduces hardware and administrative costs. While single-algorithm, key-agile encryptors exist, encryptors that are agile in a cryptographic robustness sense, are still research topics. Different applications have different security requirements for data privacy, data integrity, and authentication. Encryption is one technique that addresses these requirements. Encryption can protect proprietary information as it passes from one end of a complex computer network to the other, even through untrusted intermediate systems, such as on the Internet. Encryption technology has many other uses including encrypting disk files and producing digita