Securing data on fiber optic transmission lines

Speed, bandwidth, cost efficiency, reliability and security are some of the demands placed on telecommunication today. Fiber optic systems have the advantage of most of these requirements over standard telecommunications solutions and make up the base of all modern communications networks. Although it was initially believed that fiber optic systems would be inherently secure it has been discovered that the unauthorized extraction of information from optical fibers is relatively simple. There are various tapping methods, which are discussed in the paper. Optical taping methods enable the extraction and analyses of large volumes of data transmitting over optical fiber. In response to this problem we propose implementation of advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm, supported with block chaining method, which is necessary for high capacity systems. The problem of AES implementation at the data rates of 1 Gbps or higher is discussed and one scheme with parallelized structure is proposed for practical FPGA implementation.