how to guide: performance and agility


Balance security with performance and agility


Offloading security functions from web application servers removes the need to choose between security and performance


ANY measures that an organisation takes to secure their web applications must be balanced with the need for those applications to be highly available and to perform well enough to be usable. Indeed, for many businesses, the need for


security can often fall into third place behind availability and performance, as the uptime and responsiveness of their website can have a direct impact on sales. All security precautions must therefore be implemented in a fashion that minimises the degradation of availability and performance. One architectural principle that can help to achieve this is for security processing tasks – such as encrypting data or analysing traffic for signs of malicious behaviour – to be ‘offloaded’ onto hardware that has been specifically designed for the purpose.


WWW.INFORMATION-AGE.COM For many


businesses, the need for security can often fall into third place behind availability and performance


If those functions are performed by the same machine hosting a web server, they will be in competition for CPU cycles with processes that do the job that server is there to do: serve up content to visitors to the website. Therefore, the desire to increase security workloads must be balanced against the ensuing impact on performance. Offloading the functions removes that concern. Hardware security modules (HSMs) are a common method for offloading the task of encrypting data. These are often cards that plug into the back of each physical server, taking over the job of


encrypting any data that is bound for the Internet, or decrypting data that has come back from a user’s browser. However, encrypting the data at the individual server level means that other systems behind the firewall cannot inspect it.


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