You may hear the word “encryption” and think of spy movies or secret war messages. But data encryption is a modern technology that protects data security for your business. The tech is a little complicated which causes some businesses to avoid it. However, installing data encryption for all business files will greatly improve your data security. MDL Technology is here to break down data encryption.
Data encryption involves converting electronic data into another form called ciphertext that cannot be read by anyone while the data is in transit. Once it is verified that a user has authorized access to this data, then the ciphertext is converted back to a readable form.
There are three steps of verification through the data encryption algorithm before data access is granted. The first is authentication to verify the message origin. The second is called integrity where the technology looks at the message content and makes sure it has not been changed since it was sent. Lastly, non-repudiation is performed where the message sender cannot deny sending the message.
Today, data encryption is everywhere even if you don’t realize it. Hard drives, smartphones, flash drives, modems, smartcards and SIM cards all use data encryption for both commercial and consumer purposes. This occurred with the arrival of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange and RSA algorithms that made encryption used outside of the government and army. You can learn more about these technologies in-depth from TechTarget.
You may have seen data encryption on things like your email with protocols such as SSL/TLS, S/MIME or SSH. However, encryption does not need to be used only for email. Any web service that involves transferring or hosting data should have the highest security levels of data encryption. As more businesses move to cloud computing, authorizing and creating data encryption levels for files and information stored virtually is more important than ever.
