Traffic Flow Confidentiality in a Future Network Enabled Capability Environment

This paper looks at how traffic flow confidentiality becomes more difficult to achieve as the requirement for modern, flexible networks forces confidentiality protection closer to the edge of the network. Information available at different layers of the OSI stack is presented, as well as current and possible future countermeasures. The military implications will be illustrated by a scenario using friendly force tracing. The paper concludes with the fact that encryption above the link layer reveals traffic flow that might be utilized by an adversary. Object level encryption additionally opens up for more advanced analysis, and better solutions for traffic flow confidentiality protection should be found.