Ongoing efforts to beef up the security of the Internet’s underlying protocols may have gotten a major boost, thanks to the National Security Agency (NSA).
Officials from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) today said last week’s plenary meeting of the body charged with developing protocols for the Net was dominated with talk of better securing the Internet to thwart wide-scale surveillance akin to those programs leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“There is noticeable momentum,” said Stephen Farrell, IETF Security Area Director, today in a press briefing on last week’s IETF 88 Plenary in Vancouver.
Among some of the IETF security efforts that could see the light of day relatively soon is work on guidance for easily “turning on” encryption between email servers. Farrell says email providers already are looking at this, and the hope is they will roll it out “in a matter of months.”