[[securing-communications]]
== Securing Communications with Encryption and IP Filtering

Elasticsearch nodes store data that may be confidential. Attacks on the data may come from the network. These attacks
could include sniffing of the data, manipulation of the data, and attempts to gain access to the server and thus the
files storing the data. Securing your nodes with the procedures below helps to reduce risk from network-based attacks.

This section shows how to:

* Encrypt traffic to and from Elasticsearch nodes using SSL/TLS,
* Require that nodes authenticate new nodes that join the cluster using SSL certificates, and
* Make it more difficult for remote attackers to issue any commands to Elasticsearch.

The authentication of new nodes helps prevent a rogue node from joining the cluster and receiving data through replication.

include::securing-communications/setting-up-ssl.asciidoc[]
include::securing-communications/enabling-cipher-suites.asciidoc[]
include::securing-communications/separating-node-client-traffic.asciidoc[]
include::securing-communications/using-ip-filtering.asciidoc[]
