Data Encryption Essay -- Computer Technology

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 k ey variations, is randomly produced, and used to encrypt the data. The same key must be made known to the receiver if they ar... ...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