What Is Encryption And How Can It Work For Me?

Image courtesy of Intel Free Press at Flickr.com

We truly live in an era where information has become one of the most traded commodities available. Is it possible to ensure that the information we send, receive, create and store in our devices stays safe and accessible only to those you want to share it with?

The use of encryption software has been associated with paranoid conspiracy-theory enthusiasts who believe the government is out to get them and wants to steal their information. However, as ridiculous as it may sound, they are not entirely wrong. Your information can be at risk but not exactly the way you think. Identity theft, hacking, state-sponsored snooping and even advanced steps of social hacking may take place by violating your electronic privacy accessing your files, pictures and personal computer content.

You’ve probably heard the word “encryption” many times before but are unsure of what it means exactly, how it works and what can you do to take advantage of its benefits.

First of all, encryption is a method of protecting information in a way so that only those intended by you are able to access it. Using encryption is not something new, and the basic concept of it remains the same even if the tools available to encrypt have changed. Rudimentary forms of encryption have existed since the times of the Old Kingdom of Egypt when non-standard hieroglyphics were carved in monuments. It wasn’t until around 800 AD when Al-Kindi invented a frequency-analysis technique for breaking mono-alphabetic substitution ciphers, something that proved to be the most fundamental cryptanalytic advanced until WWII.

Encryption uses algorithms to jumble data into a string of code that is complete gibberish to those who do not have permissions to see the information. Those permissions come in the form of an encryption key that decodes the information and rearranges characters and code so it can be read the way it was meant to and without the key it is impossible to decrypt the data.
Data can be encrypted in transit, meaning when the information is traveling towards its destination; or at rest, when the data is stored at a terminal or server. End-to-end encryption for communication platforms is considered the most secure. If messages are end-to-end encrypted, only the people who are having the conversation have the keys to decrypt what’s being sent.

Software for encryption is very easy to use nowadays and it doesn’t take much to get started. Here you can see a very easy info-graphic showing you all the necessary steps to do basic encryption for folders in different operative systems. 

It is important to choose an encryption key length that is strong enough to withstand any attacks or attempts to decrypt your data. An AES 128-bit encryption key is considered suitable for your security needs as it can have more than 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 key combinations.  

Encryption software gathers random data before encrypting your files, also known as entropy. The password you use will be part of this random data gathered to cipher the files, this is why it is very important that you choose a long passphrase, in addition, you should not use any dictionary words to avoid brute force attacks. A brute force attack consists of an automatic process where all of the dictionary words are quickly input at the password login window. As computers have become increasingly faster this can be done in a matter of hours or less using cloud computing.

Here are some tips to follow:

Image courtesy of Kevin Spencer at Flickr.com

• Always choose an encryption program that uses a standard cipher that has been approved and tested by experts, like AES for example.
• Do not use common dictionary words as your password, use a long passphrase made up of capital and small letters with punctuation signs and numbers that will remember and try not to write it down anywhere
• Do not use the passphrase you use to encrypt your data for anything else like your email, Facebook or any other computer password.
• Never trust a third party service to store your encryption keys or carry out the encryption implementation, if you store data online encrypt it yourself in your computer before uploading it.
• Watch out for key-loggers and malware in your computer that could capture your keystrokes and your secret passphrase, use an antivirus and firewall and always keep it up to date.
• Never reveal to anyone your password, not even to a support department whose staff could be outsourced overseas or could be impersonating someone else. Always verify personnel before giving out any of your information over the phone

All of your information is valuable and should be protected, so take the necessary steps and get in the positive habit of encrypting your files and your communicated over the web.

If you want to learn more about encrypted communications and more advances in telecommunication technologies, be sure to check out our many articles at our blog at Don Burns’ Blogspot.