Secure signaling and access control for ATM networks

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is seen to be a technology that allows flexibility, efficiency and manageable bandwidth on demand to be achieved in high-speed networks. ATM is able to support a variety of applications, including voice, video, image and data, with different quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. This paper addresses the design of security services in ATM networks. It considers the placement of a security layer between the ATM adaptation layer (AAL) and the ATM layer that provides confidentiality, integrity and data origin authentication in the user plane. The paper then considers secure signaling and describes a public key-based authentication and key management protocol that can be integrated as part of secure call setup. This protocol is part of an overall public key infrastructure framework for ATM networks. Finally, the paper discusses the issues involved in the provision of an access control service at the connection setup phase and the user data transfer phase.