Investigation of the applicability of SSL/TLS protocol for VPN in APCS

One of the most important goals of information security is to ensure the safety of critical facilities such as power plants, traffic control systems, etc. The primary role of ACS is the management of control data in real time. To achieve this, VPNs are used, which employ various secure protocols (PPTP, IPSEC, SSL/TLS, etc.). This article presents the results of research conducted into possible delays that can occur when establishing a secure TLS connection. Such delays are potentially fatal for APCS and other time critical systems. In order to accurately measure any given delay in these operations, an experimental method was proposed and tests for their evaluation were devised. After a thorough analysis, we determined that these delays are dependent upon the type of equipment being utilized and the versions of TLS being implemented. We have also recommended some changes to the protocol to help increase the speed of such operations.