As security professionals, we all understand the importance of protecting data and the need for proper encryption. It’s no surprise, then, that more and more traffic crossing our networks is encrypted. This is a good thing from both a security and privacy perspective, but what if the encryption is being used to hide malicious activity on enterprise networks?

When Encryption Works Against Security

Our networks not only facilitate the connected world in which our businesses thrive, but also provide the conduit for threats to infiltrate our organizations. Threat activity can easily hide deep within network content to avoid detection by traditional methods, which is why we need solutions that can analyze this content with application-level context to distinguish legitimate activity from malicious behavior. But what happens when our network data is encrypted?

Here’s the irony: As more and more network traffic is encrypted, we’re gaining more and more options to decrypt that data. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but as more network traffic is encrypted, there is an increasing need for network vendors to build decryption capabilities into their devices.

Since many of these devices are already deployed inline, they can terminate an encrypted session on one side and start another encrypted session on the other. The data remains encrypted in transit on both sides of the network device, but it provides visibility into the traffic in its decrypted form. Whether it’s a next-generation firewall looking to block intruders or a managed switch directing or filtering select data, visibility is key.

Many of these devices allow decrypted traffic to be mirrored out of a port for full content analysis. As a result, most organizations have either deployed or plan to deploy network devices that are capable of decrypting traffic. Gaining the network visibility we need to secure our organizations is often a matter of enabling those decryption capabilities.

To Decrypt, or Not to Decrypt …

While network visibility is crucial for identifying malicious activity as it crosses a network, there are cases where we may prefer to keep that data encrypted at all times. But despite our best efforts, it’s often difficult to ensure that all of our sensitive data is encrypted properly. Just think of the myriad devices and applications that need to be configured properly to encrypt communications with the latest protocol versions.

By analyzing every network session in detail and knowing which are encrypted, how strong the certificates are, and what encryption protocol version is in use, we can ensure that our data is adequately protected. And while it’s tempting to focus on reports that the volume of encrypted web traffic is increasing, it’s easy to forget about the large amount of traffic on our networks that is associated with non-web applications spanning a wide range of network protocols. Many organizations find that when they take a deeper look into the data that is crossing their networks, a lot less is encrypted than originally thought.

Clearly, we are trending toward increased encryption of network data and we should all embrace it as a valuable tool to help protect our crown jewels. But it’s not the roadblock many think it is when it comes to deep network analysis. There is a growing variety of methods and devices that deliver full network content visibility in a controlled and secure manner. Every organization should consider this approach as part of its network and security evolution and strategy.