NIST group releases drafts on TLS 1.3 best practices aimed at the financial industry

Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Data Internet Privacy NIST

On January 30, the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) released a draft practice guide, titled “Addressing Visibility Challenges with TLS 1.3 within the Enterprise.” The protocol in question, Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3, is the most recent iteration of the security protocol most widely used to protect communications over the Internet, but its implementation over TLS 1.2 (the prior version) remains challenging for major industries, including finance, that need to inspect incoming network traffic data for evidence of malware or other malicious activity. A full description of the project can be found here.

Compared to TLS 1.2, TLS 1.3 is faster and more secure, but the implementation of forward secrecy, i.e., protecting past sessions against compromises of keys or passwords used in future sessions, creates challenges related to data audit and legitimate inspection of network traffic. As a result, NIST released the practice guide to offer guidance on how to implement TLS 1.3 and meet required audit requirements without compromising the TLS 1.3 protocol itself.  The practice guide suggests how businesses improve their technical methods, such as implementing passive inspection architecture either using “rotated bounded-lifetime [Diffie Helman] keys on the destination TLS server” or exported session keys, to support ongoing compliance with financial industry and other regulations––for continuous monitoring for malware and cyberattacks. The draft practice guide is currently under public review with Volumes A and B of the guide open until April 1, 2024. Volume A is a second preliminary draft of an Executive Summary and Volume B is a preliminary draft on the Approach, Architecture, and Security Characteristics.