IEEE 802.1AE

802.1AE is the IEEE MAC Security standard (also known as MACsec) which defines connectionless data confidentiality and integrity for media access independent protocols. It is standardized by the IEEE 802.1 working group.

Key management and the establishment of secure associations is outside the scope of 802.1AE, but is specified by 802.1X-2010.

The 802.1AE standard specifies the implementation of a MAC Security Entities (SecY) that can be thought of as part of the stations attached to the same LAN, providing secure MAC service to the client. The standard defines

Security tag inside each frame in addition to EtherType includes:

The IEEE 802.1AE (MACsec) standard specifies a set of protocols to meet the security requirements for protecting data traversing Ethernet LANs.

MACsec allows unauthorised LAN connections to be identified and excluded from communication within the network. In common with IPsec and SSL, MACsec defines a security infrastructure to provide data confidentiality, data integrity and data origin authentication.

By assuring that a frame comes from the station that claimed to send it, MACSec can mitigate attacks on Layer 2 protocols.

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