Sec Week 4 Paper

In today’s challenging business world one must always stay competitive to survive part of that task involves data security. When talking about keeping sensitive data secure from both outside interference and internal abuse one must look into data encryption and protocols that can be used.

In today’s report I will explain the use of encryption in today’s servers and computer both symmetric and asymmetric. After explaining both I will then make a determination on which is best to use given the situation the company faces.

When dealing with encryption determining how to exchange the encryption keys over the Internet or a large network while preventing them from falling into the wrong hands is absolutely critical. Anyone who knows the secret key can decrypt the message (thus anyone good or bad can decrypt the message). One method that can be used is asymmetric encryption, when being used there are two different keys. A public key is made available to anyone who might want to send you a message. The second key is a private one that only management or the network administrator knows it.

Any message (text, video, or other documents) that are encrypted by using the public key can only be decrypted by using the matching private key. Any message that is encrypted by using the private key can only be decrypted by using the matching public key.

This means that you do not have to worry about passing public keys over the Internet (the keys are supposed to be public). One possible problem with asymmetric encryption can be that it is slower than symmetric encryption. The company would need much stronger computer to process the encryption (thus it can be more expensive).

The other and older method used for encryption of data is symmetric encryption. In symmetric encryption the key can alter any number of items in the message (letters, numbers etc...) can be applied to the text of a message in order to change the message by a certain predetermined way. As long as both...