Cryptographic Tunneling and OSI Model

Data Security means protecting a database from destructive forces and the unwanted actions of unauthorized users. (Summer, 2004) With the explosion of the World Wide Web and the need to connect various secure private networks to it, it is vital to protect private data from exploitation when it reaches the public networks for transmission. At the heart of the networks through which the information flows is the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. Various techniques are used with respect to the OSI model that helps the data to be transmitted more securely during network transmissions. One of these techniques is Cryptographic tunneling. Cryptographic tunneling operates at the transport layer and network layer of the OSI model. Cryptographic tunneling is primarily used in VPNs or the Virtual Private Networks to add additional security to the data that is flowing through these networks. A VPN is a service that offers secure, reliable connectivity over a shared public network infrastructure such as the Internet. (Mason, 2002) The sender’s authentication, confidentiality of data and hiding the contents of the message is made possible using cryptographic tunneling. When we need data from private businesses to be transmitted through public networks, we make use of tunneling where the public network routing nodes are unaware of the transmission being part of private network. Hiding the packets to make them seem as if they were just like any other packet. A benefit of tunneling is the ability to hide source and destination addresses before data is sent, thus increasing communications security. (Merkow & Breithaupt, 2006)
The private network protocol information is viewed as being public data by the public network. Cryptographic tunneling has various types of effects on the various layers of the OSI model. At the network