Bump-in-the-wire (BITW) is a class of communications devices which can be inserted into existing (legacy) systems to enhance the integrity, confidentiality, or reliability of communications across an existing logical link without altering the communications endpoints.
The term was originally used to indicate that the device should introduce only a relatively small increased latency in communications compared to the original, unsecured, approach.
An example of such a device might be a
security appliance A security appliance is any form of server appliance that is designed to protect computer networks from unwanted traffic.
Types of Security Appliances
* Active devices block unwanted traffic. Examples of such devices are firewalls, anti virus sca ...
which applies
IPsec
In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in ...
protection to communications between existing devices which themselves lack IPsec implementation protocol stack. Such a device might also be called a security gateway or could be implemented as part of a network firewall to implement a
tunneling protocol
In computer networks, a tunneling protocol is a communication protocol which allows for the movement of data from one network to another. It involves allowing private network communications to be sent across a public network (such as the Internet ...
.
References
Computer-mediated communication
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