Patent ID: 7836497

Claim:
A method of obtaining and maintaining a resilient Internet Protocol (IP) Security (IPsec) and Internet Key Exchange (IKE) security gateway (SEG), comprising the step of: in a set of cooperating physical security gateways, implementing a network-based resiliency scheme of a virtual SEG(VSEG) function; virtualizing the IPsec/IKE function of the physical SEGs by adapting a virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP) between the set of physical SEGs that realize a V-SEG function towards a remote IPsec/IKE peer; and exchanging IKE and IPsec SA information between VRRP capable SEGs using an IPsec/IKE SA Transfer Protocol (SATP), wherein the SATP is configured to synchronize all participating SEGs with respect to dynamic IPsec state information in real time.