Why Does Your Server Need SSL/TLS Offloading ?
SSl/TLS Encryption has become an industry standard across these past few years. Leading to secure communication being the default between clients and application servers. But this has led to some unforeseen overheads, mainly on the part of the application servers. To reduce this overhead and increase security we recommend SSL/TLS Offloading.
To understand the advantages of using SSL/TLS Offloading, we first need to have an idea of what SSL/TLS Encryption is:
SSL/TLS Encryption
The Secure Socket Layer(SSL), and Transport Layer Security(TLS) protocols are mainly used to provide additional levels of security between Clients and Servers. Primarily through the encryption of data through the two protocols.
Without SSL/TLS Encryption
Here the attacker is able to perform a Man in The Middle Attacks against the network, and if successful he would be able to gather sensitive information such as cookies or other authentication data.
Here the entire network is now deemed secure, as all the packets that pass from the client to the server and vice versa are encrypted.
The current standard protocol used across the world is TLS 1.3 An upgraded version of the long-serving and often used TLS 1.2. It works through a procedure named the TLS 1.3 Handshake. Here’s a brief overview of how the handshake works:
SSL/TLS Offloading adds a new server server to your internal network, which handles all the prerequisites and the implementation of SSL/TLS Encryption from your clients to your application servers.
Using SSL/TLS Offloading can lead to marked improvements in two specific areas Performance And Security.
Performance Improvements when using SSL/TLS Offloading
Security Improvements when using SSL/TLS Offloading
The miniOrange servers implement SSL/TLS Offloading through two different methods:
SSL Termination
The proxy server or load balancer used SSL offloading acts as the SSL terminator, which also acts as an edge device. When a client attempts to connect to a website, the client connects to the SSL terminator—that connection is HTTPS. But the connection between the SSL terminator and the application server is via HTTP.
SSL Bridging
SSL Bridging is extremely similar conceptually, except rather than sending the traffic and requests on via HTTP, it re-encrypts everything before sending it to the application server.
Both methods offer their own advantages, and the use of the method is made to suit the use case of the implementation.
If you still have any queries or want to know about how miniOrange can protect your website. Please feel free to reach out to us through https://www.miniorange.com/contact.