¶ … Encryption
With the ever-increasing amount of information traffic on the net (LAN, WAN, etc.) there is a corresponding increase in the risk of vital data falling into the wrong hands. Data encryption is a technology that provides for a safe, secure and private information exchange.
The advancement of computer technology has bought a paradigm shift to our mode of communication. The Internet has managed to overcome all the geographical limitations and reduced the whole world to sort of a global village. The Internet has bought a whole new perspective into all walks of life. We are in a period where increasingly businesses are getting done online. The unprecedented growth of Internet and the global market that it promises has driven businesses all over to world to into ecommerce. Today most businesses carry their transactions online. This new technological revolution however is not without its loopholes. Hackers are on the increase and the net seems not all that safe and confidential. Data encryption is a technology that provides for a safe, secure and private information exchange. It safeguards us from the plethora of hackers and snoopers who try to misuse their technical expertise to intrude into our privacy and obtain confidential information. Let us analyze data encryption in a little detail.
Encryption
Basically encryption is a mechanism by which data which is exchanged between two systems is made unintelligible for anyone other than the intended person. Usually cryptographic algorithms are used to effect encryption or decryption. In this way even though data passing on the network is accessible for anyone it is not discernible and hence cannot be used for malicious purposes. Only the person for whom it is intended will be able to decipher it. Encryption is a software process and it makes data exchange safe and secure. In the early days encryption was primarily based on a translation table. (Classical Encryption). Every byte of data is used to offset the position in the translation table and the corresponding translated value is entered into the communication network. The decryption program at the receiver's end would again look for the matching entries in its own translation table and thus translates original data back from the encrypted form.
Compared to modern day keybased encryption systems this classical method of encryption is relatively faster but it is not that secure as a hacker only needs to know the translation table to decrypt the message. Masking and Veiling are the two main techniques employed in these classical encryption systems. 'Masking' is the method where the data items are substituted to ensure that they are incomprehensible. In the case of 'Veiling' technique the data items are not substituted as such but they are interleaved with other message packets that radically alters the meaning of the message. There are many classical systems of cryptography. Let us now see a few of them before going into the Keybased encryption systems. [Thinkquest Team]
Transposition
This is a system where the data elements are simply repositioned based on a common key. The technique is to choose any keyword and to assign numbers to characters in the keyword based on the ascending order or the position it has on the alphabetic sequence. The message that needs to be encrypted is written right beneath the keyword and the characters are repositioned based on the order of the numbers. Transposition is essentially a simple technique and hence it is not robust enough for high security data encryption needs. It is mainly used as part of other complex encryption systems.
A bit more advanced of form of the transposition method is the double transposition method. The technique involved is almost the same. The keyword is chosen and numbers assigned to it according to the alphabetic position. Here the encryption is achieved not by the repositioning of the individual characters of the data stream but rather by the repositioning of the columns of data making it totally imperceptible for the sly snooper. The encrypted message is either fully uppercase or fully lowercase to avoid giving away the number of words contained in the encrypted message. There are many other encryption systems like Pig Latin, Grille, Vigenere etc. [Thinkquest Team]
Key-Based Encryption
The modern cryptographic techniques employ key-based secrecy and the algorithms by themselves are public. This is the technique, which is currently in vogue. Keys are particular values, which allow us to decipher the data from the encrypted form. Key to the particular encryption system allows encryption of data at the sender's end and decryption...
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