Key management

A dynamic VPN provides additional security for your communications by using the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol for key management. IKE allows the VPN servers on each end of the connection to negotiate new keys at specified intervals.

With each successful negotiation, the VPN servers regenerate the keys that protect a connection, thus making it more difficult for an attacker to capture information from the connection. Additionally, if you use perfect forward secrecy, attackers cannot derive future keys based on past keying information.

The VPN key manager is IBM's implementation of the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol. The key manager supports the automatic negotiation of security associations (SAs), as well as the automatic generation and refresh of cryptographic keys.

A security association (SA) contains information that is necessary to use the IPSec protocols. For example, an SA identifies algorithm types, key lengths and lifetimes, participating parties, and encapsulation modes.

Cryptographic keys, as the name implies, lock, or protect, your information until it safely reaches its final destination.

Securely generating your keys is the most important factor in establishing a secure and private connection. If your keys are compromised, then your authentication and encryption efforts, no matter how strong, become worthless.

Phases of key management

The VPN key manager uses two distinct phases in its implementation.

Phase 1

Phase 1 establishes a master secret from which subsequent cryptographic keys are derived in order to protect user data traffic. This is true even if no security protection yet exists between the two endpoints. VPN uses either RSA signature mode or preshared keys to authenticate phase 1 negotiations, as well as to establish the keys that protect the IKE messages that flow during the subsequent phase 2 negotiations.

A preshared key is a nontrivial string up to 128 characters long. Both ends of a connection must agree on the preshared key. The advantage of using preshared keys is their simplicity, the disadvantage is that a shared secret must be distributed out-of-band, for example over the telephone or through registered mail, before IKE negotiations. Treat your preshared key like a password.

RSA Signature authentication provides more security than preshared keys because this mode uses digital certificates to provide authentication. You must configure your digital certificates by using Digital Certificate Manager (5722-SS1 Option 34). In addition, some VPN solutions require RSA Signature for interoperability. For example, Windows^® 2000 VPN uses RSA Signature as its default authentication method. Finally, RSA Signature provides more scalability than preshared keys. The certificates that you use must come from certificate authorities that both key servers trust.

Phase 2

Phase 2, however, negotiates the security associations and keys that protect the actual application data exchanges. Remember, up to this point, no application data has actually been sent. Phase 1 protects the phase 2 IKE messages.

Once phase 2 negotiations are complete, your VPN establishes a secure, dynamic connection over the network and between the endpoints that you defined for your connection. All data that flows across the VPN is delivered with the degree of security and efficiency that was agreed on by the key servers during the phase 1 and phase 2 negotiation processes.

In general, phase 1 negotiations are negotiated once a day, while phase 2 negotiations are refreshed every 60 minutes or as often as every five minutes. Higher refresh rates increase your data security, but decrease system performance. Use short key lifetimes to protect your most sensitive data.

When you create a dynamic VPN by using iSeries™ Navigator, define an IKE policy to enable phase 1 negotiations and a data policy to govern phase 2 negotiations. Optionally, you can use the New Connection wizard. The wizard automatically creates each of the configuration objects VPN requires to work properly, including an IKE policy, data policy.

Key management

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