Category Archives: Encryption

IBM Systems Magazine Publishes ASPG Cryptography Expertise

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Naples, FL (PRWEB) January 31, 2015

The latest issue of IBM Systems Magazine contains an article written by ASPG cryptography specialist and MegaCryption product manager, Gregory Thomason. The article, entitled, Encryption Is Key to Security: Align Existing Competencies with Intuitive Best Practices, offers realistic cryptography and data security advice for protecting modern data centers, stating, Attackers are browsing through your data right nowwill they find your secrets? Whether the attacker is a clever hacker in cyberspace or a nosy systems programmer in a cubicle beside you, the threat is ongoing and the costs of a data breach are layered across a spectrum of heartburn-evoking remediation tasks.

In addition to being a cryptography expert, Thomason is also the product manager for ASPGs MegaCryption solution. Whether your company chooses to secure their on-site data, cloud-stored data, data transmissions, entire files, or specific fields within the z/OS environment, MegaCryption can help. As a file-level cryptography tool, MegaCryption provides a comprehensive approach to encrypting virtually any file in your z/OS environment, while complementing any communication level encryption process you may already have in place. MegaCryption offers support of the most secure non-proprietary and well-known algorithms available today, ensuring security and compatibility with other standard implementations.

The article is also available as white paper by visiting http://www.aspg.com.

To access additional resources from ASPG, such as the white paper Big Data, Big Security: Best Practices for Enterprise Data Encryption, visit http://www.aspg.com/white-papers/.

ABOUT ADVANCED SOFTWARE PRODUCTS GROUP For nearly 30 years, ASPG, an IBM and Microsoft partner, has produced award-winning software for data centers worldwide, specializing in data security, storage administration, and systems productivity. ASPG is pleased to provide solutions for a majority of the GLOBAL 1000 data centers.

For more information about ASPG, please contact our Sales Team by phone at 800-662-6090 (Toll-Free) or 239-649-1548 (US/International), 239-649-6391 (fax) or email at aspgsales(at)aspg(dot)com. You can also visit the ASPG website at http://www.aspg.com.

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IBM Systems Magazine Publishes ASPG Cryptography Expertise

Encryption — the NFC killer app

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I believe I have found the killer app for NFC - off-phone encryption hardware for the post-Snowden era.

One of the revelations that Edward Snowden told us is that strong encryption works. Over the new year the person Snowden chose to contact, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, spelled out at the Chaos Computer Congress that the two protocols that the United States NSA and the UKs GCHQ could not decrypt were PGP (Pretty Good Privacy public-key encryption) and OTR (Off-The-Record instant messaging encryption).

However, while the math behind PGP may be secure, unless messages are decrypted on air-gapped, offline PCs, the endpoints are the weakest link in the chain. If the file containing the key itself could be stolen it would be a relatively simple case of brute-force guessing the password to the key for the encryption to be broken.

The idea of using mobile smart phones with PGP has long met with derision by the security community. Smart phones are by their nature online 24/7 and are thus the secret key file is a sitting duck for attacks - especially with the plethora of insecure apps to exploit.

Edward Snowdens lawyer said he only uses a simple phone and in Spain, police are taught to recognize terrorists by, among other factors, if they use a laptop in a car.

Enter Yubicos Yubikey Neo, a small USB device that, among other features, works as an OpenPGP smartcard.

This addresses the key problem with PGP keys on a mobile smart device. The private key is never present the phone itself, even for a split-second, and the actual decryption or signing happens on the Yubikey via NFC or on the laptop via USB.

Indeed, for better or for worse, there is no way that a user can extract a private key generated on the key itself. For those paranoid that Yubico might be backdooring their key-generation algorithm, an option is to generate a key on an air-gapped PC and then transfer it to the Yubikey Neo.

The combination of Android K-9 email client, OpenKeyChain PGP and Yubikey Neo suddenly solves the usability / security trade-off that has hampered widespread PGP adoption on mobile devices

Signing or decrypting an email needs the Yubikey to be held against the back of the device for a few seconds, a PIN is entered and there is also a counter of the number of times the PIN has been entered.

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Encryption -- the NFC killer app

Debate Simmers over Digital Privacy

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Authors: Jeremy Gillula, Staff Technologist, Electronic Frontier Foundation Stewart A. Baker, Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP Paul Rosenzweig, Red Branch Consulting, PLLC; Senior Advisor, The Chertoff Group Interviewer(s): Jonathan Masters, Deputy Editor January 28, 2015

The move by major technology companies like Apple and Google to sell products with advanced encryption has pushed the debate over digital privacy and security to a critical stage. Some policymakers are pushing for new laws that would require tech manufacturers to ensure that government investigators could access suspects digital information. Meanwhile, privacy advocates say such measures are unnecessary and may undermine security for all. CFR asked three experts to weigh in on how technology firms, in designing their products and services, should balance the privacy demands of their customers with the security concerns of police and counterterrorism agencies.

Apple's announcement in September that its iOS 8 mobile operating system would feature encryption by default has launched a spirited public debate over whether technology firms should be legally required to compromise the otherwise secure systems they market to consumers.

Law enforcement, namely the FBI, has answered with a resounding "Yes." They claim that as more data is encrypted, they are increasingly unable "to access the evidence [they] need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism even with lawful authority." They call the process "going dark."

But the numbers dont back up these assertions. In 2013, encryption foiled only nine out of 3,576 federal and state wiretaps, according to the federal judiciary. It is a huge leap to jump from one quarter of one percent all the way to "going dark." Increasing the security of our digital systems wont stop law enforcement from prosecuting and preventing crime. Police have a wide variety of investigative tools at their disposal, and only an incredibly intelligent criminal could stymie every single one (and such criminals have already had access to strong cryptography for years).

Would introducing backdoors (secret access methods that investigators can use to overcome otherwise secure systems) make law enforcements job easier? Of course. But there are lots of other tools that would make their job easier, and weve decided as a nation that these would violate our basic rights enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.

The problem is that backdoors also make criminals jobs easier. Theres no such thing as a system insecure enough for police to gain access, but secure enough to guard against criminals, malicious foreign agencies, and other bad actors. Computer science just doesnt work that way.

"Regrettably, they are trying to frame this debate as one of privacy versus security, when in reality we can and should have both."

Indeed, we have examples of backdoors that led to major digital breaches: the hacking of Greeces cell phone system in 2006, a similar incident in Italy between 1996 and 2006, and the hacking of Gmail in 2010. Instead of protecting us, law enforcement is supporting policies that would make us and our private information less safe. Regrettably, they are trying to frame this debate as one of privacy versus security, when in reality we can and should have both.

Companies must reflect the values of the countries where they do business, at least if they want to stay in business. Unfortunately, in the most recent encryption debate, much of Silicon Valley has mistaken its own left-libertarian values for those of the world. In fact, surprisingly few people outside the Silicon Valley bubble want to live with the potentially dangerous consequences of giving unbreakable end-to-end encryption to everyone.

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Debate Simmers over Digital Privacy

Be Anonymous Online Part 5.1 (Email) PGP | GnuPG | Openpgp.js Encryption – Video

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Be Anonymous Online Part 5.1 (Email) PGP | GnuPG | Openpgp.js Encryption
In this tutorial you will know how Free email providers or spy agency dig into your email, and how you can protect your mails using Encryption also demonstrate how you can use PGP in Browser...

By: Anish Mandal

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Be Anonymous Online Part 5.1 (Email) PGP | GnuPG | Openpgp.js Encryption - Video

Global Encryption Software Market is Expected to Reach $2.16 Billion by 2020 – Allied Market Research

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PORTLAND, Oregon, January 28, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new report by Allied Market Research titled, "Global Encryption Software Market - Size, Industry Analysis, Trends, Opportunities, Growth and Forecast, 2013 - 2020",the global encryption software market is expected to reach $2.16 billion by 2020, registering a CAGR of 14.27% during 2014 - 2020. Software based encryption is gaining prominence as one of the end point security solutions, as it is increasingly being adopted by the organizations worldwide. With data protection and data privacy compliance becoming a high priority, organizations have started viewing encryption as an enabler to achieve compliance and data security and at the same time mitigate the data breach risks associated with the adoption of advanced technologies, particularly cloud services and mobility.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140911/647229 )

To view the report, visit the website at http://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/encryption-software-market

From the application perspective, encryption is used across all the industries to secure both data-at-rest (data stored in data stored in files/folders and disks); and data-in-transit (email messages travelling over the network). The adoption of software-based encryption for protecting data-at-rest is higher as compared to the adoption of the same for data-in-transit. Data-at-rest encryption software accounts for approx. 93.5% of the total encryption software market by value. For data-at-rest, the two most commonly used encryption software methods include Full Disk Encryption (FDE) and File Level Encryption (FLE), with Full Disk Encryption software being the most widely deployed method for protecting data against theft and ensuring compliance with the data privacy and data breach notification laws. Full Disk Encryption is preferred over the File Level Encryption, primarily due to the two major advantages such as ease of deployment and management and complete security.

Presently, software based encryption enjoys the highest adoption in the Financial Services sector with a growing acceptance in the Healthcare Sector. Financial sector accounts for approximately 44% of global encryption software market amongst all the other industries. Entities operating in the sector are mandated by the data privacy regulations to adopt effective security measures in their organization and need to ensure that the personally identifiable data (PII) of the customers is protected from any unauthorized or unintended disclosure/access.

View all reports related to information and communication technologies at http://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/information-&-communication-technology-&-media-market-report

Key findings of the study:

The evolving data protection regulatory landscape, burgeoning number of data breaches coupled with the increasing adoption of technologies particularly cloud are driving the adoption of encryption software worldwide. A large number of organisations are adopting an enterprise wide encryption strategy plan rather than informal policies. With the rapidly increasing adoption of cloud services in all the sectors, the organisations are now looking at encryption solutions that would ensure data security and compliance with the data privacy regulations for their data in the cloud. Furthermore, the highest interest will be in encryption solutions from cloud security vendors.

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Global Encryption Software Market is Expected to Reach $2.16 Billion by 2020 - Allied Market Research