This is the start of a planned series of posts around the impact that new protocols are making on the way many of us deal with network security today.
The protocols we have been using on the internet, mainly TCP with HTTP 1.1, have shown that they cannot deal with today’s requirements for fast and efficient handling of content. As the protocols are changing, we also need to make sure, that our network security strategy is in line with the requirements. This is mainly a concern for gateway security that is targeted to inspect incoming and outgoing traffic. How is this being impacted?
Let’s start to talk about a protocol that is already specified in a RFC and is growing fast: HTTP/2
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7540
The reason for HTTP/2 is mainly that HTTP/1.1 is old and no longer an efficient way to deal with modern requirements. One example where HTTP/1.1 is coming short is the so called “Head-of-Line” blocking. HTTP/1.0 had one connection open for every request. Highly inefficient and slow. HTTP/1.1 introduced a method called pipelining. This means that we can request several objects of content in one request. The problem is that all objects need to be server in the order that they were sent.
Example:
Client: “Please send me a picture of a dog, a cat and a house!”
Read the entire article here, The impact on network security through encrypted protocols HTTP/2
via the fine folks at Cisco Systems.