Types Of Data Encryption And There Role In Information Safety

We all are aware about the term 'Encryption'. A technology / process currently being used by companies to keep their data leak proof. If you're new to this terminology, the article will help you understand its basics, when it should set up, and how to set up.

What Is Data Encryption?

Data encryption is a method that enables companies to protect their important data from unauthorized access during transition. In simple terms, encryption is a method of safeguarding data from people you don't want to see it. When you enter your card details to complete a transaction on an e-commerce portal, encryption encrypts the information so that no one can breach or steal your personal data during the transfer process. Encryption is very useful if you want to secure sensitive information, emails and cloud storage.

Encryption is a very straight forward process. You have a message, you encode it using a secret cipher, and only other people with the cipher can read it. Others who attempt to read it, just see garbage.

Every entity uses this method in its own way. Whether it's to protect corporate secrets, secure classified information, and protect personal information, data encryption safeguards it in the way you want. Evidently, the main purpose of having encryption in place is to protect the confidentiality of digital data transmitted via the internet or other computer networks.

Methods of Encryption:

There are different methods used to implement data encryption. Some of them are enlisted here for your reference.

Hashing:

Hashing is a technique where a unique signature is created for a message or set of data. Hashing receives the data during transfer and creates hash out of it. Each hash created is unique to the specific message. That's is why any change or alteration made to the message can be easily tracked.

Symmetric Encryption:

In web hosting terminology, symmetric encryption is also known as private-key cryptography. In this method, a key is used to encrypt and decrypt the message. The key is responsible for transferring data from sender to recipient in secured manner. To ensure the encryption, both the encrypter and the decrypter should have access to the same key.

Asymmetric methods:

In Asymmetric method, two keys are used for encryption or decryption. One is the public key and other a private key. A public key is freely available to everyone and is used to encrypt the message while the private key is used by the recipient to decrypt the message.

How Data Encryption Helps?

As already mentioned, Encryption helps organizations to reap benefits of infrastructure as a service, while ensuring the data privacy. The encryption also helps in reducing cost by adding multi-tenancy in cloud environment. If you encrypt data before it enters the cloud, and hold the control of the encryption keys, you can ensure complete data safety. Another key benefit of encryption is that encrypting your data on cloud and holding your own key is the safest mode.

Being a cloud service provider, safety and security of customer's data should always be your first priority. Hackers are always look at an opportunity to sneak in into your information territory. That is why you should significantly improve your information security using Encryption and key management software, specially made for virtualized environments.