Various protocols are used for inter-element communication within a deployment. These protocols include SIP, HTTPS, RMI (Remote Method Invocation), and JMX (Java Management Extensions). The common method for securing these protocols is TLS (Transport Layer Security). TLS will be used to secure the communication channel to prevent eavesdropping and message tampering. In addition, credentials used to establish these mutually authenticated TLS sessions can be leveraged to provide element–level authentication and authorization.