Filter
Top Products
Security Software—Introduction to Use Cases
Intel
®
EP80579 Software for Security Applications on Intel
®
QuickAssist Technology
PG August 2009
42 Order Number: 320183-004US
9.0 Introduction to Use Cases
This chapter discusses what’s involved in building an application using the Intel
®
EP80579 Software for Security Applications on Intel
®
QuickAssist Technology.
9.1 What’s New in this Chapter
Added Note in Section 9.2.1 explaining cryptographic framework “shim” support.
9.2 Use Cases
There are a wide variety of security applications that can be developed using the Intel
®
EP80579 Software for Security Applications on Intel
®
QuickAssist Technology.
Each of these use cases will be described in more detail in later chapters within this
document.
9.2.1 Lookaside Acceleration Model
Key use cases for the lookaside acceleration model are:
• A client may wish to use the Cryptographic API to accelerate cryptographic
operations. This may be with a view to accelerating the encryption/decryption of
“data at rest” — for example, files in a file system — or for protecting “data on the
move” — for example, packets in a network. An existing application can be
modified, or new code can be written from scratch, to use the Cryptographic API.
• In other cases, a client may be using a cryptographic framework, such as the
OpenBSD* Cryptographic Framework (OCF). Intel supplies a driver which enables
the Cryptographic features to be accessed via OCF; this driver is sometimes
referred to as the “OCF shim”, or adapter. In this way, the cryptographic operations
are transparently and seamlessly accelerated.
Note: The EP80579 security software release package version 1.0.3 does not
support OpenBSD/FreeBSD Cryptographic Framework (OCF), OCF-Linux, or
any open source projects such as Openswan*, OpenSSL*, or Racoon*. If
your application requires OCF, you must use security software package
version 1.0.2 which includes shim software to enable OCF support.
• A client may wish to accelerate a cryptographic protocol, such as IPSec. The open-
source Openswan* project is an implementation of IPSec that can use OCF for
implementing cryptographic operations. By using the “OCF shim” described above,
a client can utilize the seamless acceleration of the cryptographic operations.
See Chapter 12.0, “Using the Intel
®
QuickAssist Technology Cryptographic API” for a
more detailed description of these usage models.
§ §