An apparatus includes a port with circuitry to implement one or more layers of a Compute Express Link (CXL)-based protocol. The port includes an agent to obtain information to be transmitted to another device over a link based on the CXL-based protocol via a flit, encrypt at least a portion of the information to yield a ciphertext, generate a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) code based on the ciphertext, and cause a flit to be generated comprising the ciphertext. The port is to use the circuitry to transmit the flit and the CRC code to the other device over the link.