Planning for secure communications

Determine the level of protection that is required for your data, based on regulations and business requirements under which your company operates.

If your business requires a high level of security for passwords and data transmission, plan on implementing secure communication with Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols.

TLS and SSL provide secure communications between the server and client, but can affect system performance. To improve system performance, use TLS for authentication without encrypting object data. To specify whether the server uses TLS 1.2 for the entire session or only for authentication, see the SSL client option for client-to-server communication, and the UPDATE SERVER=SSL parameter for server-to-server communication. Beginning in V8.1.2, TLS is used for authentication by default. If you decide to use TLS to encrypt entire sessions, use the protocol only for sessions where it is necessary and add processor resources on the server to manage the increase in network traffic. You can also try other options. For example, some networking devices such as routers and switches provide the TLS or SSL function.