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Protocol
A security protocol (cryptographic protocol or encryption protocol) is an abstract or concrete protocol that performs a security-related function and applies cryptographic methods, often as sequences of cryptographic primitives. A protocol describes how the algorithms should be used. A sufficiently detailed protocol includes details about data structures and representations, at which point it can be used to implement multiple, interoperable versions of a program.
Cryptographic protocols are widely used for secure application-level data transport. A cryptographic protocol usually incorporates at least some of these aspects:
- Key agreement or establishment
- Entity authentication
- Symmetric encryption and message authentication material construction
- Secured application-level data transport
- Non-repudiation methods
- Secret sharing methods
- Secure-multi-party-computation
For example, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol that is used to secure web (HTTP/HTTPS) connections.1
Protocols are to communications what algorithms or programming languages are to computations.
Messages are sent and received on communicating systems to establish communications. Protocols should therefore specify rules governing the transmission. In general, much of the following should be addressed:
- Data formats for data exchange.
- Address formats for data exchange
- Address mapping.
- Routing.
- Detection of transmission errors
- Acknowledgements of correct reception
- Loss of information
- Direction of information flow
- Sequence control.
- Flow control 2