Case Study on Asymmetric or Symmetric

Case Study On Asymmetric or Symmetric

Guelrmor Lawrence

Devry SEC 280

March 26, 2013

Company’s that have important information to protect and keep secret must have the best security available to protect this information from getting out. There’s always someone out there trying to access or steal critical information and there are two basic techniques for encrypting information so hackers or criminals can’t get which are asymmetric and symmetric. Both asymmetric and symmetric acceleration technologies can deliver great benefits to users. I’m going to discuss both symmetric and asymmetric encryption, what each one does and which one I would use if I were trying to protect my company’s information.

With symmetric encryption, you run a file through the program and create a key that scrambles the file. Then you e-mail the encrypted file to the recipient and separately transmit the decoding key (which could be a password or another data file). Running the same encryption application, the recipient uses the decoding key to unscramble the message. Symmetric encryption is fast but not as safe as asymmetric encryption because someone could intercept the key and decode the messages. But because of its speed, it's commonly used for e-commerce transactions.

Asymmetric encryption is more complex and more secure. Two related keys are required: a public key and a private key. You make your public key available to anyone who might send you encrypted information. That key can only encode data it cannot decode it. Your private key stays...