When secure protocols use Message Authentication and Encryption, they need to specify how these two algorithms are combined. A first solution, which is used by the current version of TLS, is to compute the authentication code and then encrypt both the data and the authentication code. A drawback of this approach is that the receiver of an encrypted TLS record must first attempt to decrypt data that has potentially been modified by an attacker before being able to verify the authenticity of the record. A better approach is for the sender to first encrypt the data and then compute the authentication code over the encrypted data. This is the encrypt-then-MAC approach proposed in :rfc:`7366`. With encrypt-then-MAC, the receiver first checks the authentication code before attempting to decrypt the record.