How Encryption Works

Whenever you connect to the internet, or exchange files with other PCs, you are risking the security of your files. The threat is even more significant when you send sensitive information over the internet, such as credit card numbers, bank account credentials, personal information, etc. These types of information can spell doom for you if they fall into the wrong hands. This is where encryption techniques come in handy.

Data encryption makes your data secure, so that whenever you transfer data over potentially unsecured channels, your data cannot be hacked into by unauthorized users, or hackers. The encryption algorithms alter your message and data into something that can only be read by the destination PC. Any other PC trying to decipher the data will yield only garbage data. This is done by adding a "symmetric key" to your data, which will be "known" to the destination PC only. These keys have become much more complicated in structure over the years. Initially, in the 70's, 56-bit keys would be enough to give total data security. However, these days, much greater security is required, in which users have to make use of 128, 192, or even 256-bit keys to secure their data from unauthorized access. Unless the destination PC has a copy of the keys, it will not know how to decipher the data. Even hacking using brute force techniques can be stopped dead in the tracks by these advanced encryption techniques. A simple 128-bit key can in fact have more than 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations, making it near impossible for hackers to break into those.

Another popular type of encryption key is the public key, which can be broken up into two parts. One part is the public key, which is available to any PC that picks up the transmitted data. However, the PC that picks up the data will be able to decipher it only if it has the second part of the key, namely, the private key. These private keys are usually made of prime number pairs. This makes the system highly secure, since there can be a near infinite number of combinations. If any hacker tries to hack such messages, well, good luck to him. He will need more than a few lifetimes to hack into the secured data.

Encryption is a must-have security measure nowadays. Encrypting your data with public or symmetric keys is one of the best ways of making your sensitive data hacker proof.

By: anvisonite

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