As data breaches continue to make the headlines, more businesses are looking towards encryption technologies to help them secure their critical assets, both at rest and in transit.
What is Data Encryption?
Data encryption is the method of translating data into another form or code so that access to the data is limited to only those with the correct decryption key (or password). Encrypted data, sometimes referred to as ciphertext, is one of the most popular and widespread forms of data security. If you experience a data breach involving ciphertext, then the attackers will still not be able to see the data.
Common Types of Data Encryption
- Asymmetric encryption means that keys come in pairs. This means that you have two keys, one key encrypts, and the other decrypts. Often, the keys are interchangeable, but this is not always the case.
- Symmetric encryption is a form of encryption that involves only one key for to both encrypt and decrypt the data. The entities communicating via symmetric data encryption must be able to exchange the key between them so that it can be used in both the encryption and decryption process.
How Data Encryption Works?
The process of changing data from a readable format to a scrambled document is known as data encryption. By converting “plaintext” into “ciphertext,” encryption usually uses mathematical models called algorithms. It is necessary to employ a decryption key, a string of digits, or a password that is also generated by an algorithm to decode the data back to plaintext.
The encryption techniques that are used to process plain text are referred to as mathematical computations. In addition to these techniques, an encryption key is necessary. First, the plain text is transformed into ciphertext, which are encrypted data fragments. The ciphertext is transmitted via the unsecure lines of communication rather than the plain text to the recipient.
The encryption text is sent to the designated recipient, who uses a decryption key to return it to plain text. A larger key size increases security by exponentially increasing the complexity of the decryption operation.
Benefits of Using Encryption Technology for Data Security
Below are 5 simple reasons why adopting a suite of encryption technologies can be beneficial to your organization:
- Extra Layer of Security – Data encryption is just transforming plaintext into ciphertext. This indicates that the data is transferred and stored in a cipher text—a highly encrypted format. The resources necessary to decrypt it are not available to the attacker. The resources needed to decrypt it are not available to the attacker. Therefore, adding a second layer of protection implies that the secured possession will remain safe even if one of the layers fails. This strategy effectively reduces the possibility of data leaks.
- Avoiding Financial Consequences – No matter if your business is subject to security standards, laws, or other compliance obligations, any data breach could have major financial and legal consequences. Fines, lost business, legal action, and even your company going bankrupt are just a few examples of these consequences. Because of this, any company that deals with information security should make investing in encrypting data in transit and storage a top priority, regardless of compliance or rules.
- Increase in Client’s Trust – Regardless of the type of business you run, at least some of your clients or customers will be curious about the measures you take to safeguard the information and assets you store on your hard drives and in the systems of your cloud service providers. By employing encryption technology and telling your clients about it in public, you boost their confidence and trust in your company. These clients are therefore more likely to remain loyal to your business and refer others to it.
- Privacy and Security – A device that is encrypted will remain safe even if an attacker acquires unauthorized access to a network, making any attempts by the attacker to access the data pointless. Encryption guarantees that only the intended recipient or data owner can read communications or data. This stops hackers from obtaining and intercepting private information.
- Secure Internet – Users feel more secure when entering personal information on websites and conducting financial or e-commerce transactions when encryption is in place. Businesses, publishers, and e-commerce providers can now provide a safe user experience by using the standard to encrypt web content by running HTTP over the safe Socket Layer protocol, which will eventually be replaced by the Transport Layer Security protocol.
The Drawbacks of Encryption
Whilst encryption does have some major advantages, there are numerous drawbacks that you should take into consideration before adopting the strategy. Encrypting all of your files that contain personal data, for example, may make them more secure, but it will also make it nearly impossible for your employees to get any work done.
File systems are places where employees are constantly creating, moving, modifying, copying, and sharing data (in spreadsheets, documents, ppts, and more) that they are working on at that present moment. Adding encryption to this could potentially create an untidy work environment that is more difficult to manage.
How Lepide Helps with Data Protection
At Lepide, we fully believe that the only effective method of data protection is full visibility and transparency. If you know where your most sensitive data is, who has access to it and what users are doing with it, you’ll be able to spot and react to potential data breaches immediately. Not only that, but you’ll be able to satisfy compliance audits, streamline operations, and much more.
For complete visibility into the security of your data, you’ll need to implement a Data Security Platform that utilizes a data-centric strategy to improve data protection, detect/react to threats and meet compliance. Schedule a demo of Lepide Data Security Platform to see how we can help you protect your data today.
We help enterprises to determine where their areas of weakness are and to help them reduce data breaches risks with our FREE Data Risk Assessment service.