The Environment
Networks
The Internet
The Internet is the de-facto global network and companies are using the Internet for communications to take advantage of the lack of call charges and high bandwidth availability.
Unfortunately, the Internet is inherently insecure with anybody who has access to the routers being used for a connection able to look at the packets that are exchanged between computers.
It is not a safe environment for companies wishing to exchange business critical data and highly secretive information.
Protocols
The protocols used within the Automotive industry within Europe today are:-
OFTP
(ODETTE File Transfer Protocol version 1) |
Insecure over the internet. If used over the internet the use of a VPN is recommended. |
| OFTP2 |
Highly secure and can be used for network security, computer to computer, company to company, department to department and person to person without the need for a VPN. |
| FTP |
Insecure over the internet. If used over the internet the use of a VPN is recommended. |
| S-FTP |
Highly secure but can only be used for computer to computer security. |
OFTP is the dominant communication protocol used within the European Automotive industry and has been in this situation for many years. OFTP was designed to operate upon secure networks and has been traditionally implemented upon X.25 and ISDN.
OFTP2 is the security enabled variant of OFTP and is used to transmit data securely over the public internet without the need for VPNs.