Today’s Security Tip of the Day deals with a
subject that is pretty abstract to most
people. Cryptography is referred to as the
science of secret writing. This is not a new
concept that came about with the development
of the Internet. Cryptography has been
around for hundreds of years dating back to
the days of the pyramids and the Ancient
Egyptians. Today we use the concept
introduced by them to develop a safe, secure
method of communicating, exchanging and
validating data between computer systems.
Whether it is very sensitive information
that needs to be transmitted via an email,
online financial or banking transactions, or
any other data that you would rather not
have the whole world knowing about,
encryption can help you protect the data.
When email, data, etc. is transmitted via
the Internet with no encryption, it is
possible that someone could eavesdrop and
intercept the communication. Good
encryption assures that the data remains
intact and maintains the confidentiality,
integrity, authentication and
non-repudiation of the data received.
There are 3 general types of crypto
algorithms:
Secret Key – Symmetric
containing single or 1-key encryption
Public Key – Asymmetric containing
dual or 2-key encryption
Hash – One way transformation with no
key encryption
There are many different methods of data
cryptography and a variety of vendors
providing encryption software. All of the
encryption programs perform two distinct
operations: Encryption, encoding the data in
such a way as to conceal the information and
Decryption, the process of transforming the
data back to its original form.
There are
advantages and disadvantages to each and
differing opinions of which is best and when
each should be used, but most everyone
agrees that encryption plays a crucial role
in data protection. And in most
environments today you will see a mixture of
algorithms in use. Each situation has its
own set of requirements. In today’s world
all Security Administrators and users need
to be conscious of the significance of the
data they are dealing with and the need to
secure that data.
Today's
topic will be a tough one to make easy for everyone to
understand but we'll give it a shot!!