BIG-IP® SSL Acceleration frees up servers from the difficult task of encrypting and decrypting data secured for privacy reasons. CPU-intensive decryption is migrated onto a high-performance device designed to handle SSL transactions more efficiently.
With National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other governmental/security entities suggesting all organizations migrate to 2048-bit keys by January 1st 2011, data will be 232 times more mathematically complex and therefore more secure than the 1024-bit keys commonly in use. This is enough to provide protection for nearly two decades before higher processing power requires another migration. However, this increased key strength results in a 4-8 times performance reduction -- yielding approximately 20 percent of the 1024-bit key SSL performance. BIG-IP SSL Offload and Acceleration can mitigate the impact of 2048-bit keys to help your organization optimize the performance and capacity of your existing infrastructure.
By consolidating SSL certificates directly onto one BIG-IP device, you can save hundreds of dollars per certificate.
Certificate management is centralized to a single source, greatly simplifying administrative duties.
BIG-IP SSL Acceleration eliminates the need to buy and install SSL-capable server software on every server within the network.
BIG-IP SSL Acceleration holistically, partially, or conditionally encrypts data without requiring changes to application code, providing the ability to accurately apply encryption at the necessary control points while optimizing traffic across the system.