Actian Director protects end-to-end client/server communication through the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES encrypts the entire network data stream between the Remote Server Manager and the Director client. The AES mechanism uses both AES and RSA keys to provide a higher level of security.

The Director client generates the AES symmetric key and sends it to the server, where the server’s private key decrypts it. Key size is negotiated between the client and server to the highest level supported by both ends. Key size is at least 128 but could be up to 256 if both ends have the Java Cryptography Extensions installed.

By default, AES encryption is enabled, but it can be disabled for testing or other purposes through the II_MGMTSVR_ENCRYPT_SESSIONS environment variable, described in Environment Variables. If AES encryption is disabled, RSA is still used to encrypt user credentials.