What is IPSec?

A. TCP/IP is widely used in most networks and with Windows 2000forms a compulsory part of your network however a number of problems with TCP/IPexist.

Data is not sent in an encrypted format over TCP/IP which leaves it vulnerableto a number of attacks including eavesdropping which is where an attacker hasaccess to the network and can therefore view all data sent.

Being able to view data sent over the network would allow data such aspasswords to be viewed when connecting to some services like FTP which does notencrypt passwords sent over the network.

A solution was created in IPSec which is an industry standard based onend-to-end security which only the transmitting and receiving computers needknow about any encryption.

Windows 2000 provides an implementation of IPSec and Group Policy settings inwhich to define your environments implementation of the IP add-on. This wasdeveloped by Microsoft and Cisco.

One of the great things with IPSec is it operates at layer 3 so anyapplication of IP and upper layer protocols such as TCP, UDP will gain theadvantage of IPSec without any modifications being needed to the applications.