An adaptive encryption scheme for secure microservice communication via variable-length keys and obfuscation

Microservices architecture has been widely adopted for its modularity, maintainability, and scalability. However, frequent inter-service communication poses significant security challenges, especially under high concurrency, complex attacks, and heterogeneous environments where traditional encryption protocols struggle to balance performance and security. This paper proposes an adaptive encryption scheme featuring variable-length keys, obfuscation-string injection, and dynamic multi-algorithm composition. The scheme dynamically adjusts encryption behavior based on system load and threat conditions, enhancing resilience while minimizing performance overhead. Experimental comparisons with DES, 3DES, AES, and ChaCha20 show that the proposed method achieves 7.88%–100% higher robustness and significantly improved ciphertext randomness while maintaining acceptable performance. This paper demonstrates that adaptive encryption provides a configurable and effective secure communication mechanism for modern microservice environments.