Data Encryption

780 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: What Are The Advantages Of Cryptography

Encryption

Data encryption refers to the transformation of data into a structure that makes it unreadable by anyone without a secret decryption key. It ensures that messages can be read only by the planned recipient. Encryption is the procedure of obscuring information to create it unreadable without special information. Only organizations and individuals with an abnormal need for secrecy have actually made good use of it. Nowadays, encryption is one of the most important technologies for maintaining your privacy and the security of important information. This helps out greatly especially when E-Commerce is being used.

Encryption converts a message in such as way that its contents are hidden from unauthorized readers. It is intended to keep messages and information as a secret. Plaintext, also known as clear text, is the plain or original message, which is has not yet been encrypted. Once the message is encrypted it is then called a cipher text. This process is obviously referred as encryption. The exact opposite process is called decryption. Encryption is the most successful way to attain data security. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it. Data encryption is a means of scrambling the data so that is can only be read by the person holding the key, a password of some sort. Without the key, the cipher cannot be broken and the data remains secure. Using the key, the cipher is decrypted and the data is returned to its original value or state. Each time one desires to encrypt data, a key from the 72,000,000,000,000,000 possible key variations, is randomly produced, and used to encrypt the data. The same key must be made known to the receiver if they ar...

... middle of paper ...

...M and the US National Security Agency. It was previously the most dominant type of encryption, but it is now being taken over by AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). Since data encryption standard, only took on a 56-bit symmetric key encryption, AES uses three key sizes, 128, 192, and 256 bits. When personal computer users want to encrypt email or other documents, they go to Phillip Zimmerman?s "Pretty Good Privacy" software. This software allows you to digitally sign a message, which verifies to the recipient that you are the sender and that no interfering is involved.

Works Cited:

"Data Encryption Standard (DES)". http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip46-2.htm

"TechTalk: Encryption."Computer Concepts. Parsons, June. Boston,Course Technology, 2006. Pg 328-331.

"Encryption". http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci212062,00.html

Show More
Related

  • Government Restrictions on Encryption within the United States and Around the World

    2684 Words  | 6 Pages

    What is encryption? Encryption is a technological technique that protects and secures the transfer of plain text information between two sources through the use of the internet. This is done by rearranging the text using a mathematical algorithm that renovates the message into an indecipherable form, which can only be unlocked and translated with a use of a key. The strength of the encryption key is measured by its length, which is determined by the number of bits and by the type of encryption program.

    Read More

  • Assignment 2: Securing Personally Identifiable Information

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    Securing Personally Identifiable Information is critical and important because of the fact that PII is used to distinguish one person from another. Each piece of information is uniquely given to a specific individual. Having one thing unsecured, could give someone access to that unsecured item and so much more. If I had my social security card out in the open and someone was able to somehow get ahold of my SSN, it would give them unlimited access to pretty much everything else about me. They would be able to figure out my full name, birthday, address, etc. Having this information available could lead to the person getting credit cards in my name, getting access to my already opened credit cards, and even worse, stealing my identity. To prevent Identity theft, I will make sure my PII is secured and locked away. I will use the

    Read More

  • The Types And Disadvantages Of Asymmetric Encryption

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    Asymmetric Encryption is used to protect the data while in movement. Asymmetric Encryption is also known as Public Key Encryption. It uses two related keys, a public key and a private key which is not shared with anyone. This pair of keys are developed by mathematical methods which can be solved in one direction. So anyone can encode a data using the public key but only the user with a private key can decode that specific data. The length of Asymmetric Key Encryption is normally 1024 or 2048 bits. However, in Asymmetric framework the keys with smaller than 2048bits are considered as not safe to use.

    Read More

  • Privacy Of Personal Information

    1580 Words  | 4 Pages

    We are living in world that is growing in technology. Technology is evolving so rapidly, especially in ways that allow us to store personal information. For example, we can look up a purchase with no receipt at a retail store with a swipe of a credit card. Another example, we could go to the doctor and the nurse can print out a copy of all our health records that are stored in the computer by just typing in our full name. Although this may be a way to make things easier for us, it is also a way for people to take our information without permission and do what they please with it. People can hack into the database of retail stores and steal account numbers and people can just say your name and get your health history if the nurse does not ask for a form of identification. Information privacy is a growing concern for Internet and data users. In a report Protecting Privacy in an Information Age: The Problem of Privacy in Public, researched by Helen Nissenbaum of Princeton University, she states:

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Encryption

    788 Words  | 2 Pages

    Encryption refers to the translation of data into secret serial characters. It is the most successful medium to achieve security of data. To access an encrypted file or data, a user must have the secret key or password to allow the entry to the data for decryption. Encrypted data is called cipher text whereas an unencrypted data is referred to as plain text.

    Read More

  • Privacy Security

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    Benjamin Franklin once said: “ They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.“ Today, we may agree or disagree with Franklin’s quote, but we do have one thing in common: just as Franklin, we are still seeing freedom vs. security as a zero-sum game – one where one can gain only at the expense of another and where the two cannot possibly coexist. However, this is not necessarily the case. There does not have to be necessarily a trade-off between privacy and security; the proper balance is the one where neither security nor privacy suffers from both of them being present in our daily lives.

    Read More

  • Explain How Could You Protect Your Person Information From Being Hacked Or Stolen?

    596 Words  | 2 Pages

    How could you protect your person information from being hacked or stolen? you will have to read this article to find out... here a tip only add the people you trust. Why do i say this because it like you are lost in the wood and you were hungry... you were trying to look for food then you found berry but didn't know what was going to happen so you ate them. Ten seconds later you fell down the floor seeing only a glare of light, then everything is black and you wish you had never ate those berry's.

    Read More

  • The Definition and Importance of Data Encryption

    2007 Words  | 5 Pages

    Data Encryption is from the cryptography science, which includes coding and decoding of message to protect the safety. Development computer technology makes the encryption even more complicated. The ability for people to break codes is increasing, so are the ability to guard the codes. Many encryptions are available now. They were developed by some hi-tech company and sold, or you can choose some free service. Actually, when you are using the web browsers, emails, or even the basic system, your information has been automatically encrypted.

    Read More

  • The Birthday Paradox

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...tal part of lives just like privacy. Using cryptology provides mechanisms through a digital signature. This signature is inserted using a key (that only the writer of the email possesses) whilst a timestamp binds itself to the document. This type of cryptography is used to control access of security installations or pay-per-view television channels.

    Read More

  • A Brief History of Cryptography

    1864 Words  | 4 Pages

    Computer science is a vast field that includes nearly everything relating to computers. Everyday there is information transmitted all over the Internet. Pictures are uploaded, transactions are made on thousands of online retail websites, and banking transactions take place everyday on the Internet. All of these transactions have created a need for secure communications. People wish to keep things like banking, medical, and political information from the eyes of unwelcome parties. This has created a need for cryptography. Cryptography is the science or study of the techniques of secret writing, especially code and cipher systems, and is used by everyone from the average citizen to the government and military.

    Read More

  • Cloud Computing Security

    1601 Words  | 4 Pages

    Despite the numerous advantages offered by cloud computing, security is a big issue concerned with cloud computing. There are various security issues and concerns associated with cloud computing, among them being phishing, data loss and data privacy. There are different mitigation measures that cloud pioneers are currently using to ensure data stored in the cloud remain secure and confidential as intended. Encryption is one mitigation method used to ensure security in cloud computing. According to Krutz and Vines (2010), encryption involves coding of the data stored in the computing cloud such that hackers cannot gain access to the data. Data encryption seems to be the most effective method of ensuring security in computing (Krutz and Vines, 2010). However, it is of paramount importance to note that encrypted data is usually difficult to search or perform various calculations on it.

    Read More

  • Cryptography Essay

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    The length of the key for the encryption can vary from being very short to extremely long, and the length of the message being encrypted. The protection of data being transferred between ATMs and the bank, and the use of cell phones, is the most common everyday encounter with encryption. To encrypt and decrypt information, a cipher is used. In a cipher, there is a set of well-defined steps that can be followed to encrypt and decrypt messages.

    Read More

  • Case Study On Tjx Breach

    817 Words  | 2 Pages

    Encryption: - Data encryption is the best way to reduce risks associated with misplaced, lost or stolen data.

    Read More

  • Data Privacy Essay

    779 Words  | 2 Pages

    Moreover, E-commerce has widely recognized nowadays among people. Therefore such data should be secure in databases and privacy of data should be maintained.

    Read More

  • The Impact Of The Internet On Communication

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    Email (electronic mail) was one of the biggest breakthroughs in communication when the internet was commercialized. With email, it became possible to send messages and letters across the world in a matter of seconds to the recipients address. Email was used as an alternative to conventional mail or ‘snail' mail, as the term was introduced to describe its speed. As technology improved, it became possible to ‘attach' documents, photographs and even sound clips or songs to emails which made mail by post redundant. Emails used packet switching software whereby the email was broken down into ‘packets' and sent via the internet to the recipient.

    Read More

More about Data Encryption

Open Document