As we’ve talked about in the rest of this series, there are several ways to use the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) seven layers of networking model to help us secure our networks and make them more resilient. Now, we’ve reached the first of the ‘host’ layers, the OSI transport layer.
Previously, we described ‘what’ allows data to travel (physical layer), ‘how’ it travels (data link layer) and ‘where’ the data travels (network layer). Next, the OSI transport layer is a bit more of ‘how’ the zeroes and ones travel. More specifically the transport layer focuses on quality and speed.
What Is the OSI Transport Layer?
The Transport Layer outlines the functions and protocols for transferring variable-length data sequences between the source and the host. That means that since data has different sizes and is broken up into packets, some rules are in place on how to do that. Two types of protocols are often associated with the OSI model, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP). The quick distinction between the two is that TCP prioritizes data quality over speed. Meanwhile, UDP is a connectionless protocol that prioritizes speed over quality.
Cybersecurity Threats to the OSI Transport Layer
Despite being a ‘host’ layer, the transport layer is prone to some of the threats to the previous ‘media’ layers. This is another place to expect sniffing, specifically related to ports and protocols. Distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks can also strike the transport la ..
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