SSL & TLS

One of the main ways that security on web servers is maintained is to use TSL/SSL security certificates. These are digital, cryptographically signed software packages that are used to confirm that requests to and from web services are from resources that can be trusted. Two cryptographic protocols are in common use to secure network requests to web servers. They are Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and its successor, Transport Layer Security (TLS). These use X.509 public and private key certificates to ensure that requests to access web site resources are valid.

However, the process of establishing secure communications using SSL and TLS is very resource intensive. If the processing of TLS/SSL establishment is done on a web or application server, this takes a lot of resource that would be better used to serve content. The widely accepted solution to this issue is to offload the processing of the intensive task of encrypting and decrypting network traffic and SSL session establishment to a dedicated system. An SSL Accelerator is designed for this very purpose. SSL Accelerators are optimized for SSL session establishment, and the encryption and decryption of communications.

Free LoadMaster on Azure can be used as an SSL Accelerator. This removes the load from other Azure VM’s that are delivering applications and content and will make them more responsive. In addition, LoadMaster can be configured to compress and cache application content to reduce the volume of data that needs to be delivered by Azure servers and sent over the Internet.