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Essay on Computer Security and Encryption
Introduction to Data Encryption
Whenever data is exchanged electronically the privacy of the data is a requirement. The use of encryption restricts unintended recipients from viewing the data, which are deemed secret and potentially dangerous if made known to irresponsible parties.
Nowadays, encryption is the process of transforming plaintext, data that can be read by anyone, to ciphertext, data that can only be read by someone with a secret decryption key.
A message before being changed in any way is called plaintext. Plaintext messages are converted to ciphertext by means of some encryption method. A particular such method is called a cryptosystem.
History of Encryption
In its most primitive form, people have been attempting to hide certain information that they wanted to keep to their own possession by substituting parts of the information with symbols, numbers and pictures.
Ancient Babylonian merchants used intaglio, a piece of flat stone carved into a collage of images and some writing to identify themselves in trading transactions. Using this method, they are producing what today known as 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature' belonged to this trader, however only he had the intaglio to produce that signature. Certainly, technology these days has developed at such fast pace that the need to protect information grows with the decreased reliability of older encryption techniques. Basic modern encryption is not much different from the early civilizations' substitution using symbols. Translation table lends itself very well in making a piece of data normally indecipherable. Nevertheless computers at present are much too sophisticated that translation table is easily broken and therefore no longer practicable. Instead encryption nowadays has grown into such specialized field that involves mathematical, non-linear cryptosystem that even fairly powerful computers take months or even years to break the ciphertext.
Encryption Today
Industrial spying among highly competitive businesses frequently requires that widespread security measures be put into place....
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