Security over optical transport network beyond 100g

An apparatus, comprising:

• a processor configured to:
• divide data traffic into multiple optical transport units formatted according to an optical transport network (OTN) standard, the multiple optical transport units including a master optical transport unit and one or more slave optical transport units, each optical transport unit respectively including overhead and a payload, the overhead including used overhead specifically defined in the OTN standard and unused overhead not specifically defined in the OTN standard;
• encrypt each optical transport unit with a respective one of multiple encryption keys;
• define security control parameters identifying the multiple encryption keys;
• insert the security control parameters into the unused overhead of a first slave optical transport unit among the one or more slave optical transport units;
• and
• an optical interface configured to, after the insert operation, transmit the optical transport units over an optical channel in encrypted form.

A non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations including:

• dividing data traffic into multiple optical transport units formatted according to an optical transport network (OTN) standard, the multiple optical transport units including a master optical transport unit and one or more slave optical transport units, each optical transport unit respectively including overhead and a payload, the overhead including used overhead specifically defined in the OTN standard and unused overhead not specifically defined in the OTN standard;
• encrypting each optical transport unit with a respective one of multiple encryption keys;
• defining security control parameters identifying the multiple encryption keys;
• inserting the security control parameters into the unused overhead of a first slave optical transport unit among the one or more slave optical transport units;
• and
• after the inserting, causing the optical transport units to be transmitted over an optical channel in encrypted form.