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Data Encryption Essay

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Missing Chart Encryption Encryption is a method of programming data for security so that it appears to be random data. Only the people sending and receiving the information have the key to decrypt the message, which will put it back into its original form making it readable. The only people with the key are the people who are intended to read the message. Not many people know what encryption is. I took a survey of twenty students and asked two questions. The first question I asked was do you know what encryption means and the second question I asked was have you ever heard of anybody using encryption. This is a chart of the information I received: Many people wonder exactly how encryption works. People think that …show more content…

For example, the word computer would be changed to FRPSXWHU (Parsons 328). This method was easy because it was just a simple offset of the alphabet and you could just line up the letters of both alphabets and figure out what the message was. There are weak encryption and strong encryption. Caesars method is known as weak encryption because it can be deciphered. Deciphering a code without authorization is known as “cracking” a code. In order to crack the simple substitution code, you could make twenty-five different transformation tales where each of them has a different offset. Strong encryption, the opposite of weak encryption, is very tough to crack. By using expensive, specialized, code-breaking computers, strong encryptions methods can be broken. Also, encryption methods can be broken by the use of supercomputers, mainframe computers, workstations and personal computers. The codes can be broken using these computers by using the brute-force method, which consists of trying all of the possible keys (Parsons 329). Symmetric key encryption is where the key is used to not only encrypt a message but to decrypt it as well. This is also known as conventional and secret key encryption. Symmetric key encryption is rarely used due to the fact that the person who encrypts the information has to get the key to the person who decrypts the information. This is uncommonly used because if the key is intercepted by an unauthorized person, there can

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