Security in Advanced Optical Communication Networks

The increased demand of data services within the last few years has prompted a commensurate explosion in transportable bandwidth, most of which contain sensitive information, personal data, bank accounts, credit card numbers, proprietary documents, and more. As a result, there are two types of security in communications, securing user data and securing the physical network. The first is addressed with encryption algorithms, the unbreakability of which does not depends so much on the sophistication of the algorithm but on the difficulty to break it using a sequential computer; that is, it capitalizes on the inability of the attacker to use a fast supercomputer. The second is not a well addressed topic, particularly in modern fiber-optic networks. One attempt to create an unbreakable cipher-text is quantum cryptography that emanated from quantum mechanics; this method capitalizes on the no-cloning principle of particular characteristics of photons, such as polarization. In this paper, we examine the security of advanced optical networks, fiber-optic and free space optical (FSO). We describe quantum cryptography and the quantum key distribution, including the principle of teleportation, we identify vulnerabilities and we discuss detection mechanisms and countermeasure strategies against attacks on the physical network.

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