Encrypting Transient Traffic?

[Jared Burton]

I have three locations connected via leased lines. One location feeds the other two to the internet. That location is also where our DMZ's live. In a year or so, we'll be getting an internet connection to one of the other locations. 

In the event that our primary location isp goes down, and traffic from the outside, destined to our DMZ, re-routes through the secondary location, over our internal wan, and on to the DMZ at the primary location... Should this outside traffic be encrypted as it passes through our internal network?

[Richard Burts]

You certainly want to keep the external traffic separated from your internal traffic if it is arriving at the secondary location and being sent to the dmz at the primary location. But I do not see that encrypting the traffic would help accomplish any separation.

We typically encrypt our traffic if it will pass through networks that are not secure so that no one can read our traffic. In the situation that you describe it is unsecure traffic passing through your network. Encrypting it would make it difficult for you to read it. But why would you attempt to read it?

HTH

Rick