Abstract: Disclosed is a system and method for maintaining a secure, encrypted networking session across a communications network by dynamically replacing encryption keys during the networking session and without terminating the session. A secure control channel is embedded within the general encrypted network connection and is used to transport encrypted control messages from one network endpoint to another. In order to hide that fact that such control messages are being transferred (as opposed to general network data traffic), the control message data packets are formatted in a way to simulate the standard general network data packets.