What is encryption, how does it work and why is it important? – Bizcommunity.com

Many may have seen it within their WhatsApp and view encryption as being infinitely complicated, and while it is certainly no small feat to create truly secure encryption algorithms, there are a lot of simple types of encryption that you might have implemented yourself without knowing it.

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Encryption was used by Julius Caesar during his reign of the Roman Empire, where he would change the first three letters of the alphabet to the last three thereby encrypting the messages he sent to his generals. Similarly, the Germans invented the Enigma machine to send encrypted messages during World War II, which meant the allies could not, at first, read the intercepted content.

Interestingly, the first prototype of the computer emerged from an investigation into figuring out how to decipher Enigma.

With this security technique, you will not only prevent identity theft but in the case of losing a device such as a smartphone, tablet or computer, you can be confident that cyber criminals will still not be able to access your data.

In this system, all internet users have two keys a public one that everyone can see and use and a private one that only a specific individual can use.

An alteration made by a mathematical algorithm transforms readable data (a message) into non-readable data. This means that when it is sent to a recipient, it is encrypted and in order to read it, a key is needed to decrypt it.

All the major operating systems and many popular software applications give you the option of encrypting files or folders on your device. When you use this option, you must choose a password that allows you (and anyone else you share the password with) to unlock and decrypt those files. As such, if a cybercriminal succeeds in intercepting one of the messages, he or she will not be able to read it without your private key, and your information remains secure.

Unlocking the file means that it has been decrypted in your devices memory. If for example, someone has opened a backdoor into your machine with malware, they can access that data if it is unlocked.

This does not mean encryption is ineffective, in fact, liberally using encryption can really limit the amount of damage someone can do and it can also shrink the window of time in which an attacker has access to your decrypted data.

Therefore, layers of defences are a good thing: one technology can help bolster the effectiveness of another as each shrinks the opportunity for an attacker to steal data.

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What is encryption, how does it work and why is it important? - Bizcommunity.com