Data Encryption
I. What is Data Encryption?
Data encryption describes the transformation of plain text into a different format that is meaningless read by human eye without being decrypted, so called cipher text, in order to prevent any unauthorized party to obtain information from the document.
According to the Webster dictionary, “cryptography is the practice and study of data encryption and decryption - encoding data so that it can only be decoded by specific individuals.” Crypto is derived from the Greek word kruptos, to hide, from kruptein, which means hidden and secret. In the old days, people attempted to withhold certain information as their private possession, and to hide the information from exposures to the public. There were many different methods they used in order to conceal this information, such as substituting part of the information by symbols, numbers or pictures for different reasons to protect their secrets. With the advancement of human intellects and modern computing powers, cryptosystems are invented as systems used to encrypt and decrypt data electronically. By deploying sophisticated mathematical algorithm into the process, it combines the original data with one or more a serial of numbers or strings of characters, as known as “keys” privately and solely owned by sender and/or recipient. Cipher text is generated as an end result of this process. The computer aided data encryption is much more accurate, efficient and reliable compared to the ancient methods.
Encryption has a very long history,1 which can be traced back to about 1900 B.C. Cryptography was first used in the form of hieroglyphic inscription by an ...
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...partment of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, <http://csrc.nist.gov/CryptoToolkit/aes/frn-fips197.pdf>, Docket Number 000929280-1201-02
2. Federal Information, Processing Standards Publication 197, Announcing the Advanced Encryption Standards, (November 26, 2001)
3. Jim Reavis, Network World Fusion,
<http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2001/0730feat2.html>, (July 30, 2001)
4. Joan Daemen,Vicent, Rijmen, The RijnDael Block Cipher, AES Proposal, (2000)
5. Lou Breit, Security Demands Lead to Strong Measures, Enterprise Networking Magazine, (December, 2002)
6. SANS Institute, History of Encrytion, Information Security Reading Room, 2001
7. Think Quest Team, Data Encryption, History, Legal and Ethics, (Copyright@1999)
8. Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, Prentice Hall PTR, page 479-512, Third Edition, (1996)
Encryption is a strategy for changing data on a computer in a manner that it gets to be distinctly incomprehensible regardless of the possibility that somebody can access a PC with individual information on it.
Encryption is the most powerful way to secure information by protecting it in the occurrence of theft, loss, or unauthorized access. It scrambles your data by requiring the receiver to have a secret key or password which would allow them to decrypt it. Web browsers indicate encrypted security techniques by showing a “lock” icon in the status bar. Webpages for online shopping will have either “http” at their beginning of the web address or a “lock” icon on the page. Email services should be protected by antivirus software. These
Created by Philip Zimmermann in 1991, this program has been widely used throughout the global computer community to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the users’ data, giving them the privacy of delivering messages and files only to their intended individual or authorized person (Singh, 2012). Not only being useful for individuals as a privacy-ensuring program, it has also been used in many corporations to protect their company’s data from falling into the wrong hands (Rouse, 2005).
Cryptography or Cryptology comes from the Greek words kryptós meaning "hidden, secret” and graphein, "writing", So cryptography is the study/practice of hidden writing, or coding messages in order to send messages between two parties without a third party being able to read the messages. Cryptography is a process invented thousands of years ago, but was tedious to use as messaged had to be drafted, encoded, transported, decoded before reaching its intend recipient. It wasn’t until the early 20th century when mechanical devices cable of complex mathematical calculations were designed to automate the encoding and decoding of messages in such complex ways that it would be near impossible to decode by hand. An example of this
..., Nicholas G. 2010. “Past, Present, and Future Methods of Cryptography and Data Encryption.” Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Diffie, Whitfield. (2008). Information Security: 50 Years Behind, 50 Years Ahead. Communications of the ACM. 51(1), 55-57.
The RSA encryption is related to the cipher of Julius Caesar (1300s) that shifts three letters to encode messages. The cipher of Julius Caesar was used in war to send messages securely. Here is how Caesar encodes his message using the cipher. First Caesar assigned A through Z to 0 through 25. For instance A is zero. Second, add three to each numbers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Approximately four thousand years ago in Menet Khufu, a small village in Ancient Egyptian, the beginnings of an essential component to cryptology was founded, the modification of text. In a tomb of a local noblesman, Khnumhotep II, hieroglyphic inscriptions were written with unusual symbols in order to confuse and obscure the meaning of the inscriptions being written. It is said that a nobleman’s tomb’s decorations often “break” with the norms of a typical Egyptian tomb (www.cs.dartmouth.edu). Khnumhotep’s tomb is an example of this “breaking from the norm”, which could signify his importance during his lifetime. The next example of cryptology surfacing in ancient times is about 400 years later in Ancient Mesopotamia.
Cryptography is the study or science of techniques of secret writing and message hiding. Cryptography constitutes any method in which someone attempts to hide a message, or the meaning in some medium. One specific element of cryptography is encryption, which hides the data or information by transforming it into an undecipherable code. Encryption uses a specified key to perform the data transformation. The length of the key for the encryption
In this era when the Internet provides essential communication between tens of millions of people and is being increasingly used as a tool for security becomes a tremendously important issue to deal with, So it is important to deal with it. There are many aspects to security and many applications, ranging from secure commerce and payments to private communications and protecting passwords. One essential aspect for secure communications is that of cryptography. But it is important to note that while cryptography is necessary for secure communications, it is not by itself sufficient. Cryptography is the science of writing in secret code and is an ancient art; In the old age people use to send encoded message which can be understand by the receiver only who know the symbolic and relative meaning of that encoded message .The first documented use of cryptography in writing dates back to circa 1900 B.C. Egyptian scribe used non-standard hieroglyphs in an inscription. After writing was invented cryptography appeared spontaneously with applications ranging from diplomatic missives to war-time battle plans. It is no surprise, then, that new forms of cryptography came soon after the widespread development of computer communications. In telecommunications and data cryptography is necessary when communicating in any untrusted medium, which includes any network, particularly the Internet [1].Within the context of any application-to-application communication, there are some security requirements, including: