Sec 280

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Asymmetric vs. Symmetric |

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From the days of the Greek to modern times, people have used ways to try and hide information with cryptography. With the advent of the computer that is able to process much more information faster, there has been a need to be able to come up with stronger encryptions to safe guard our sensitive data. Two of today’s leading types of cyphers are asymmetric and symmetric. Used correctly, each one of these has the proper place and both have their advantages and disadvantages. Knowing the differences, advantages and disadvantages of each can give a company a better choice of which type works best for them.

Asymmetric keys, according to the textbook Principles of Computer Security: Security + and Beyond, make use of a public and a private key to decipher an encrypted message and the key must be current (Conklin, Wm. Arthur., 2010. p. 86). What this means is that a pair of keys are used. This means that someone will a receive a public key and a private key from some time of certifying authority, either being a third party or an in-house generated key pair from within a company. Another coworker or user wants to send that initial person a message. That second person will obtain a copy of the public key, create a message, and send it once it has been encrypted with that very same public key. The receiver gets the message and uses the private key that no one else should have, to decrypt the message. Immediately, the problem with this type of key is obvious. It is fairly easy to send a message one way but not back to the sender. This makes sending a message or some type of file much longer than it needs to be if you do not hold the private key. This might also mean that if someone who wants to decrypt a message would only have to decrypt the private key opposed to the whole message. On the other end of this, a benefit of this type of system is that only the private key that is being used must be kept...