SSL offloading is the process of removing the SSL based encryption from incoming traffic that a web server receives to relieve it from decryption of data. Security Socket Layer (SSL) is a protocol that ensures the security of HTTP traffic and HTTP requests on the internet. SSL traffic can be compute intensive since it requires encryption and decryption of traffic. SSL (called TLS or Transport Layer Security now) relies on public key cryptography to encrypt communications between the client and server sending messages safely across networks. Encryption of sensitive information protects against potential hackers and man-in-the-middle attacks.
SSL is a cryptographic procedure that secures communications over the internet. SSL encoding ensures user communications are secure. The encryption and decryption of SSL are CPU intensive and can put a strain on server resources. In order to balance the compute demands of SSL encryption and decryption of traffic sent via SSL connections, SSL offloading moves that processing to a dedicated server. This frees the web server to handle other application delivery demands.
How does SSL Offloading Work?
SSL offloading relieves a web server of the processing burden of encrypting and decrypting traffic sent via SSL. Every web browser is compatible with SSL security protocol, making SSL traffic common. The processing is offloaded to a separate server designed specifically to perform SSL acceleration or SSL termination. SSL certificates use cryptography keys for encryption. RSA keys of increasing key lengths (e.g. 1024 bits and 2048 bits) were the most common cryptography keys until a few years ago. But more efficient ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) keys of shorter key lengths are replacing the RSA keys as the mechanism to encrypt traffic.
How to Configure SSL Offloading?
To configure SSL offloading, organizations enable routing of SSL requests to an application delivery controller that intercepts SSL traffic, decrypts the traffic, and forwards it to a web server. In SSL offloading, importing a valid certificate and key and binding them to the web server are important to ensure correct exchange of unencrypted traffic.
What is SSL Offloading in a Load Balancer?
SSL offloading on a load balancer is now a required capability and these load balancers also referred to as SSL load balancer. This is a load balancer that has the ability to encrypt and decrypt data transported via HTTPS, which uses the SSL protocol to secure data across the network.
Does Avi Offer SSL Offloading?
Yes, Avi provides SSL offloading of encrypted traffic that uses RSA 2K keys as well as those that use ECC keys. Avi delivers high performance for SSL offloading, as well as a number of enterprise-grade features to help understand the health of SSL traffic including alerting on incorrect versions and to troubleshoot SSL-related issues.
For more on the actual implementation of load balancing, security applications and web application firewalls check out ourApplication Delivery How-To Videos.
For more information on ssl offloading see the following resources:
SSL offloading relieves a web server of the processing burden of encrypting and decrypting traffic sent via SSL. Every web browser is compatible with SSL security protocol, making SSL traffic common. The processing is offloaded to a separate server designed specifically to perform SSL acceleration
SSL acceleration
TLS acceleration (formerly known as SSL acceleration) is a method of offloading processor-intensive public-key encryption for Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to a hardware accelerator.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › TLS_acceleration
SSL termination is a process by which SSL-encrypted data traffic is decrypted (or offloaded). Servers with a secure socket layer (SSL) connection can simultaneously handle many connections or sessions.
SSL offloading is the process of removing the SSL-based encryption from incoming traffic to relieve a web server of the processing burden of decrypting and/or encrypting traffic sent via SSL.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a server and a client—typically a web server (website) and a browser, or a mail server and a mail client (e.g., Outlook).
SSL offloading (aka SSL termination): The Load Balancer decrypts incoming HTTPS traffic, and sends it to the backend server unencrypted. SSL passthrough: The Load Balancer does not decrypt incoming HTTPS traffic, and sends it to the backend server 'as is'.
In SSL Termination, the load balancer establishes a new SSL connection with the backend servers, re-encrypting the traffic before forwarding it. On the other hand, in SSL Offloading, the load balancer forwards the decrypted traffic as unencrypted HTTP traffic.
SSL offloading takes care of the encryption/decryption process on a separate device so that it doesn't affect the web server's performance. The idea behind SSL offloading is to do encryption operations anywhere other than on the web server.
Offloading refers to the data transfer from a digital device to another digital device. It is a solution where computations are migrated to the resourceful computers in order to increase the capabilities of mobile devices. This method is different from the conventional client-server architecture.
An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates a website's identity and enables an encrypted connection. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a security protocol that creates an encrypted link between a web server and a web browser.
One example of sensitive data protected by SSL is financial information, such as credit card numbers. Other examples include: User login credentials. Personally identifiable information (PII).
HTTPS is HTTP with encryption and verification. The only difference between the two protocols is that HTTPS uses TLS (SSL) to encrypt normal HTTP requests and responses, and to digitally sign those requests and responses. As a result, HTTPS is far more secure than HTTP.
SSL Bridging: The Load Balancer/Proxy decrypts incoming HTTPS traffic and re-encrypts it before forwarding it to the backend server. SSL Offloading (also known as SSL Termination): The Load Balancer/Proxy decrypts incoming HTTPS traffic and sends it to the backend server without encryption.
SSL passthrough is ideal for secure data transfers, as encrypted traffic is secure from malicious attacks until it reaches its destination. In contrast, SSL offloading decrypts the data with a load balancer, after which the decrypted data packets get forwarded on to the web server.
SSL termination at load balancer is desired because decryption is resource and CPU intensive. Putting the decryption burden on the load balancer enables the server to spend processing power on application tasks, which helps improve performance.
Instead of relying upon the web server to do this computationally intensive work, you can use SSL termination to reduce the load on your servers, speed up the process, and allow the web server to focus on its core responsibility of delivering web content.
SSL termination, which decrypts SSL requests at the load balancer and sends them unencrypted to the backend via the Droplets' private IP addresses. SSL termination places the slower and more CPU-intensive work of decryption on the load balancer and simplifies certificate management.
To configure SSL offloading, you must enable SSL processing on the NetScaler appliance and configure an SSL based virtual server. The virtual server will intercept SSL traffic, decrypt the traffic, and forward it to a service that is bound to the virtual server.
No SSL means no online security is enabled on your website. SSL certificate is a digitally signed certificate that provides online security to sensitive data. It encrypts communication that is happening between the client browser and the webserver.
Terminates the connection on a device between the client and the Exchange Server and then uses a nonencrypted connection to connect to the Exchange Server.
SSL termination or SSL offloading decrypts and verifies data on the load balancer instead of the application server. Spared of having to organize incoming connections, the server can prioritize on other tasks like loading web pages. This helps increase server speed.
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