Security and IPv6

Systems integrators and network consultants should be aware of the new risks that may arise when migrating their customers' IP networks over to IPv6. Despite the new protocol being security-enabled, the transition can weaken an organization's security strategy. This tip, reposted courtesy of SearchSecurity.com, analyzes some of these risks and offers potential solutions.

If you haven't thought about the impact of IPv6 on your network's security, it's time to start thinking! The replacement for the venerable IPv4 protocol is now in use on the Internet and might even exist on your network without your knowledge. Here's a look at some of the security implications of IPv6.

You're probably aware of the driving force behind the push to IPv6 -- we're running out of IP address space! The current 32-bit addressing scheme used by IPv4 allows for a whopping 4.3 billion unique addresses. Although that sounds like a lot, consider that there are approximately 6.4 billion individuals on our planet. Certainly everyone doesn't have an IP address, but those that do might have multiple between home and work systems, IP-enabled phones and other network-aware devices. The rapid explosion of techno

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logy in emerging markets, especially in the Asian-Pacific region, demands a new supply of IP address space. IPv6 solves this problem by using 128-bit addressing. That allows for a total of 3.4 x 10³⁸ addresses; a quantity that should keep us from running out for a long time. (Although, that's what they said when IPv4 came out!)

So, what does the emergence of IPv6 mean to security practitioners? Let's look at five specific issues that impact our work:

As you can tell, IPv6 is revolutionary. It allows us to prepare our networks for the next decade of ubiquitous access but, as with any innovation, requires careful attention from a security perspective.

About the author
Mike Chapple, CISSP is an IT Security Professional with the University of Notre Dame. He previously served as an information security researcher with the National Security Agency and the U.S. Air Force. Mike is a frequent contributor to SearchSecurity, a technical editor for Information Security magazine and the author of several information security titles including the CISSP Prep Guide and Information Security Illuminated.

This tip originally appeared on SearchSecurity.com.