Bump-in-the-wire

The term bump-in-the-wire (BITW) refers to a communications device which can be inserted into existing (legacy) systems to enhance the integrity, confidentiality, or reliability of communications across an existing logical link without altering the communications endpoints.[1][2] The term was originally used to indicate that the device should introduce only a relatively small increased latency in communications compared to the original, unsecured, approach.

An example of such a device might be a security appliance which applies IPsec protection to communications between existing devices which themselves lack IPsec implementation protocol stack. Such a device might also be called a security gateway or could be implemented as part of a network firewall to implement a tunneling protocol.

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