Protecting Data through Encryption

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Protecting data through cryptography from unauthorized eyes is a high priority for organizations that store personal information. Cryptography is the process of hiding the real meaning of a message through a pre-determined code that is only known to the person encrypting and decrypting a message. Different forms of cryptography can be seen in our everyday life from the word puzzle in daily newspapers to secretaries writing in short hand. Cryptography has been around since the time of the Egyptians and has made many advances through the years.
The first sign of cryptography was documented on Egyptian scribes where non-standard hieroglyphs were used on clay tablets. (Whitman, 2011, p. 351) The Egyptians were the first documented people to use cryptography in 1900 B.C. (Whitman, 2011, p. 351) With cryptography surviving for so many years it is no wonder that it is still being used today to hide the real meaning of messages. There have been many advances since the time of the Egyptians but the purpose is still the same which is to keep information from unauthorized individuals.
With more personal data being stored on information systems that are accessible through the World Wide Web the desire for hackers to decode encrypted data has increased. Since there is additional interest in decoding encryption the cryptographers need to constantly develop harder cyphers for individuals to solve. Hackers steel personal information from personal computers or databases storing personal information for organizations than use the information to steel the identities of others. When personal information is sent over the internet through a network that is not using cryptography to encrypt the data it is very easy for the data to be view...

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...o keep un-authorized individuals from seeing the information they are sharing with others. Cryptography like technology is always going to be changing to try and keep one step in front of hackers. With so many organizations losing sensitive information to hackers it is important to continue to think outside of the box for new ways to secure data through cryptography.

Works Cited

Anthes, G. (2014). French Team Invents Faster Code-Breaking Algorithm. Communications Of The ACM, 57(1), 21-23. doi:10.1145/2555807
Mone, G. (2013). Future-Proof Encryption. Communications Of The ACM, 56(11), 12-14. doi:10.1145/2524713.2524718
Savage, N. (2013). Stopping the Leaks. Communications Of The ACM, 56(1), 19-21. doi:10.1145/2398356.2398363
Whitman, Michael E.; Mattord, Herbert J. (2011-01-01). Principles of Information Security
(Page 351). Cengage Learning. Kindle Edition.

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