First Paper

Analyze the overall attributes of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography technologies. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each, and speculate upon the main reasons why organizations utilize both technologies today. Give an example of where you would consider using each of these forms of encryption within an organization to support your response.

Symmetric encryption is the oldest and best-known technique. A secret key, which can be a number, a word, or just a string of random letters, is applied to the text of a message to change the content in a particular way. This might be as simple as shifting each letter by a number of places in the alphabet. As long as both sender and recipient know the secret key, they can encrypt and decrypt all messages that use this key.

The problem with secret keys is exchanging them over the Internet or a large network while preventing them from falling into the wrong hands. Anyone who knows the secret key can decrypt the message. One answer is asymmetric encryption, in which there are two related keys--a key pair. A public key is made freely available to anyone who might want to send you a message. A second, private key is kept secret, so that only you know it. Any message (text, binary files, or documents) that are encrypted by using the public key can only be decrypted by applying the same algorithm, but by using the matching private key. Using the matching public key can only decrypt message that is encrypted by using the private key. This means that you do not have to worry about passing public keys over the Internet (the keys are supposed to be public). A problem with asymmetric encryption, however, is that it is slower than symmetric encryption. It requires far more processing power to both encrypt and decrypt the content of the message.

Reference:

MICALI, S., & RABIN, M. O. (2014). Cryptography Miracles, Secure Auctions, Matching Problem Verification. Communications Of The ACM, 57(2), 85-93....