- Encryption is essential for securing data during transmission and storage, protecting sensitive information such as user credentials and transaction records.
- It plays a crucial role in maintaining confidentiality, verifying message origin, ensuring data integrity, and establishing non-repudiation, enhancing overall data security.
- Encryption is mandated by data privacy and security regulations in various industries, making it a fundamental component of compliance and regulatory standards.
An Internet server is a computer device or software program utilised to store, process, and deliver information and services on the Internet. It serves as a central hub and can respond to user requests through network connections, providing web pages, files, data, or other resources as needed.
Internet servers typically boast high performance and reliability, capable of serving multiple clients simultaneously and handling a substantial volume of requests. However, the data they store and process may contain sensitive information like user login credentials, personally identifiable information, and transaction records. To safeguard the confidentiality and integrity of such data, servers often employ encryption techniques to encrypt stored and transmitted data.
How encryption works
Encryption is the process of encoding and decoding data to make it difficult to be illegally obtained or cracked during transmission and storage. It relies on cryptography and algorithm technology, utilising mathematical operations and logical relations to convert plain data into cypher data. This enhances the confidentiality and irreversibility of the data.
To decrypt the encrypted data back to its original form, a decryption key is required, which is a string of numbers or a password generated by an algorithm. Secure encryption methods employ a vast number of cryptographic keys, making it practically impossible for unauthorised individuals to guess which key is correct or use a computer to easily calculate the correct string by trying every potential combination.
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Importance of encryption
Encryption plays a crucial role in ensuring the security of smartphones and computers, as well as in safeguarding financial activities like bank deposits and online shopping.
There are several main functions of encryption. It maintains confidentiality by keeping data secret, verifies message origin, ensures data integrity by preventing unauthorised alterations, and establishes non-repudiation, holding senders accountable for their messages.
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Purposes of encryption
Encryption serves as a cornerstone of data security, playing a pivotal role not only in safeguarding sensitive information but also in facilitating digital transformation and compliance with regulatory standards.
In today’s dynamic data landscape, where information is constantly in transit, encryption, combined with robust security measures such as authentication, becomes paramount. It ensures that data remains secure as it traverses between devices or servers.
Beyond its primary function of protecting data from unauthorised access, encryption shields it from misuse by malicious entities, preventing fraudulent activities, extortion attempts, or unauthorised alterations of critical documents.
As cloud storage gains widespread adoption among organisations and individuals, encryption emerges as a vital component in securing data throughout its lifecycle: during transit to the cloud, while at rest on servers, and during processing by workloads.
In addition, some data privacy and security regulations mandate robust encryption practices. In industries such as healthcare, education, finance, banking, and retail, encryption is often mandatory from an organisation’s regulatory perspective.
In the information era, data security has been an inevitable issue for each individual and industry. Therefore, encryption has an increasingly higher importance no matter what the concrete purpose is.
