Symmetric and Asymmetric Encryption

Symmetric and Asymmetric Encryption

Bob Dad

Sec 280

11/8/2015

        Information for our company is the life blood that keeps us thriving as a business and that being said should be protected. In today’s world sensitive data is more sought after than a company’s money. Luckily there are many ways to protect information from any hacker’s access our servers, emails and clients. The most common, well known and simplest way to protect our data is encryption. For those who don’t know encryption simply is the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized personal can read it. The most basic level of encryption we can do is symmetric and asymmetric encryptions. A simply encryption that uses keys, one key for the encryption against outside sources trying to break in, the other key to decrypt for the authorized personal trying to access the encrypted data. Researching into boy these types of encryptions and see which one would be better for our company to use.

        The first key we are going to talk about is the symmetric encryption also known in the computing world as the “secret key”. The way this encryption works is it only uses one key, one to encrypt the data and the same key to decrypt the data. Being very easy to use without extensive computer knowledge and usually very fast to set up and encrypt most data. Although symmetric encryption keys have a necessity to be kept protected we have to make sure each employee who would need a key gets it without any risk of it getting out. That being said it may be secure, the slightest accident of losing or exposing the key could lead hackers finding it. Retrieving any and all information our companies have stored in our databases. The risk of all our employees having the proper knowledge to keep the key from reaching the wrong hands is very high. So I do not think the ABC Institute of Research if they want to keep any of their top secret information safe.

        The encryption method I think the ABC Institute of Research should use is the Asymmetric Encryption. Although asymmetric is a lot slower than symmetric it actually tends to be a lot safer to use, that’s all thanks to something asymmetric has called “public keys”. These public keys are so safe that they can be published anywhere even on the internet if need, because they need a second key for the data to be read. The way the asymmetric encryption works is it has one key for encryption “the public key” and another key for decryption “the private key”. For example you can email everyone you work with your public key then when everyone emails you back it will be encrypted and only you would be able to decrypt and read their emails.