Traffic-Flow Security

What Does Traffic-Flow Security Mean?

Traffic-flow security is the use of various measures or methods to hide the presence of messages across a communicational medium, or to otherwise cloak messaging to prevent the observation of traffic levels across an IT infrastructure.

The idea behind traffic-flow security is that even in highly protected systems, it might still be possible for outsiders to ascertain the amount of traffic over a system at any given time. The use of traffic-flow security tools makes it impossible for external observers to see whether traffic is changing in real time, or when any individual message goes from one location to another.

Techopedia Explains Traffic-Flow Security

There are several methods for traffic-flow security. One involves the use of dummy traffic in addition to the encryption of actual messages, and sender and receiver addresses. This can make it look like a system is experiencing a consistently high level of traffic in order to obscure the actual volume of traffic in the network. Another option is to send a continuous encrypted signal even when a network is not being used.

The principle behind traffic-flow security shows how businesses and other parties may guard even seemingly basic data such as the date and time that someone accesses a platform, or when they send a message. In some situations, this data is not regarded as necessarily private; in other cases, it may be necessary to hide traffic on a platform where knowledge of access times and traffic levels could be used inappropriately by an outside observer.