Research Problem
Discuss about the use of cryptography in various technologies and its challenges.
Cryptography techniques have been used to secure the sensitive data before transmitting over the network. The data are transmitted via internet and stored in such a way that it is accessible from anywhere. There are chances of data leakage through network that may breach the security of data as it directly affects the privacy of information. To make sure that even if data gets leaked due to some bugs the information is not in a readable format. To assure that the data leakage will no cause leakage of actual information cryptography techniques are used.
Most of the information is shared over internet, thus it is possible that some third part access the information. To avoid such cases cryptography is used as it provides verification that the data is sent by correct user and also make sure that information is delivered to valid user.
Cryptography techniques are used to improve the security of information so that users can make use of availability of applications on the network as all the applications uses high quality of cryptography technology. These are basically used to get secure communication as it is necessary to keep the information confidential. Some basics functions that are covered in cryptography technique are encryption and decryption (Staff, 2015). Encryption means transforming the actual text of data in the form that is not readable by humans and decryption is getting back the text in a human readable form (Lin, 2015). This technology requires the uses of secret key. This can be assumed as a password without it the actual data will not be unlocked. The password is shared only between actual sender and receiver.
There are basically three forms of cryptography techniques and they are used at different point of time. Symmetric, asymmetric and cryptographic hash functions are three forms and all make use of a secret key (Jisc, 2018). The strength of the cryptography algorithm is directly related to the length of key. In case of symmetric cryptography algorithm same key need to be used for encrypting and decrypting the data. The advantage of using this method is speed of transmission. There are several issues associated with the symmetric cryptography that is every channel needs a separate secret key and sometimes it doesn’t provide authenticity of the data (Rivest, Shamir & Adleman, 2013). It creates the problem of sharing the key to long distance.
Overview of Cryptography
Asymmetric cryptography uses the method of public and private keys. It provides better security as compared to symmetric cryptography as it assures that authenticity of data packets is met. However, it lowers the speed of transmission of data packets and also utilizes more number of resources (Tassel, 2016). The increasing use of cryptography technology has raised various risks as it can be used in some legal copyright issues. Additionally, cryptography gives the right to have secret communication which leads to increase in criminal activities (Wilkins, Keefe & Rehman, 2015).
Cryptography technology is one of the essential techniques used for building secure VPN. It assures that messages are received securely to the end users this is done by using the secret. It makes sure that two entities can have secure communication on the network by encrypting the message. The complete process includes encrypting the text message by using the public key, and then the message is forwarded in the network channels (Chaudhry, Farash, Naqvi & Sher, 2016). The encrypted message could not be read by any third party user and it will only get decrypted by using private key that is known only to the valid receiver and it has not been disclosed on the entire network. The intended user will get the data packets from the channel and will decrypt the encrypted text and read the original message. This guarantees that integrity, authenticity and confidentiality of data packets are met.
The use cryptography increases the overall security of network by maintaining confidentiality and can be used for communication of data in order to make eavesdropping attack a difficult task for hackers (Cimato & Yang, 2017). It does not require any sophisticated technology for encoding or decoding the information. As the information has been scattered over the communication channels thus theft of information is increasing day by day (Tong, Duan, Zhuang, Cao, Wei & Lin, 2014). Cryptography resolves the problem and make sure that even if the information has been leaked, it won’t be possible for the third party users to read the actual text.
Cryptography technologies have been used in various applications in modern time. The use of cryptography has expanded in every field and has been used in day to day security. In a modern world, delivery of emails and online communication is a common thing for business, friends or multinational companies (Trilightzone, 2016). Thus it is important that communication in the giant network is done through protected measure because the networks are unprotected and attackable. There are numerous attackers present on the channels to steal data and miss-use them (Utexas, 2017). Cryptography has important existence in our daily life and resolves the issues of data leakage.
- It has been used for transferring money electronically over the network by using a proper encryption system.
- It has used by organisation to have secure communication by avoiding the third party to read the data (Chhibber & Patra, 2015).
- It can also be used for storage of data as it provides secrecy in storage as it automatically encrypts the information stored on the network.
- Digital signature is another application of cryptography that is used to provide authentication and gain trust among users.
- It can also be used for time stamping as that make sure that document is delivered within a particular time (Berger, Gueye & Klamti, 2017).
- Cryptography has made the tasks easy in daily life, as now days it has been used for electronic voting.
Applications of Cryptography Technologies
There are various challenges that a network face due to cryptography. Interruption is one of them as it makes the information unavailable or unusable on the system by valid users. This attack destroys the availability of information by disabling the communication in between which can cause huge loss to the organisation (Verbauwhede, Balasch, Roy & Van Herrewege, 2015). Interception is other challenge that a network faces due to the use of cryptography as it sometimes allow unauthorized party to gains access to the data packet by side channels. This violet the confidentiality of data packets as the channels is not secure (Hemalatha & George, 2015). Cryptography makes sure that actual data is not read by the unauthorized user but they can modify the assets. This can be done by altering the encryption codes and changing the values in the file this leads to loss of integrity. Fabrication is another issue as it unknowingly inserts objects into the system.
Other than that cryptography is a very complex technology as it requires management of encryption keys that add additional burden on the network. One big disadvantage of cryptography is that it secures the data but on the other side it increases the importance to securing the secret keys. The entire security is dependent on the secret keys thus if secret key gets lost it will create loss of data packets (Tutorialspoint, 2015). This is a very expensive process as it requires use of additional resources and requires full disk involvement which reduces the overall performance of the system which also opens the doors for attackers. Apart from that of encryption is done correctly it may lead to false sense of security.
The problem with cryptography is that it is not scalable as it is difficult to perform cryptographic hashing, exchange of keys, digital signature construction and batch processing in large distance. The data stored on cloud need to be protected by using cryptography. Internet provides the ability to communicate freely with vast number of parties group but is important to protect the data from denial of service attacks. Problem with cryptography technology is that if it is not regulated regularly then it wouldn’t be possible to filter the wrong data and can cause false information to reach to the end users (Menezes, Sarkar & Singh, 2016). If cryptography is monitored regularly then it does not address concerns related to security but is difficult to manage the in cryptography as it is based on electronic commerce system.
Literature Review
Various challenges that can be seen in an organisation due to cryptography is difficulty in identifying and implementing appropriate organizational structures as there are various processes that require legal assistance to discovery which data can be encrypted and which cannot be (Bojinov, Sanchez, Reber, Boneh & Lincoln, 2014). It is also difficult to understand the existing compliance and audit standards as every organisation has different information management lifecycle. Encryption and key management is the biggest challenge in binding cryptographic operations and maintain the identity of users and information (Poornachander. 2017). Additionally disadvantage of using cryptography for encrypting the data is speed which is more than the traditional encrypting method. Sometimes the encryption done using cryptography makes the authorised user difficult to access the data. If in some cases complete breakdown of information occurs cryptography technology will not able to handle some cases (Buchmann, et. al, 2017). Apart from that applying cryptography increases the cost as it does not provide protection against the vulnerabilities that occur due to poor design of network protocols and procedures (Kocher, 2018).
Purpose
The main purpose of cryptography is transmitting the information over large network while maintaining the authentication, confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation cases. It maintains the authentication of data that is verifying the actual identity of user so that it is sure that data is not received from wrong user. Cryptography helps in maintaining data confidentiality as it makes the actual data set unavailable to unauthorized user. It is only possible by use of encryption that makes the data exchange possible with valid users.
Attacks due to cryptography
The attacks that occur on the system due to cryptography are cipher text attack, known plaintext attack, chosen plaintext attack, brute force attack, birthday attack, man in middle attack, side channel attack, timing attacks and fault analysis attack. These attacks simply focus on attacking the keys and try to break the chipper text (Goud & Reddy, 2016). The time taken to break the key is dependent on length of key. These attacks are used to find collisions that happen in the hash function.
There are a number of advantages and disadvantages of use of cryptography in today’s business world. Due to technological advancements, the process of encryption and decryption has become more efficient and it also enables more information to pass over a single network. The technology of quantum computation has become substantially popular nowadays which is used by enterprises for storing their business data as quantum superposition which resulted in increasing the speed of computation than compared to old methods. Furthermore, this technology has a promising future as it increases the security of data and by using secret keys which protects it from cyber criminals over a wide range of network. All these technologies have become possible due to the implementation of cryptography. The significance of cyber security is growing parallel with the importance of cryptography as the demand for securely sending data over large networks grows as well by using quantum physics. Moreover, cryptography is a crucial element in the cyber security since it prevents the risk of potential side-channel attack on the system. As the amount of data increases over the internet, the risk of cyber security grows as well. Therefore, the popularity of cryptography will increase with time as the demand for cyber security increases for avoiding unauthorised access to the data.
In cryptographic algorithms, there are three techniques which differ based on encryption and decryption technique.
Secret Key Cryptography: It is also called asymmetric encryption, and in this technique, a single key is used for both encryption and decryption of data packers. This technique is not suitable for sending information to a long distance because it uses a single key. In case the receiver is situated in another country or a far region, it becomes difficult to transfer the key as it requires more time.
Public Key Cryptography: It is also called asymmetric encryption, and in this technique, different keys are used for encryption and decryption of data. Primarily, this technique was used for authentication of data and key exchange.
Hash Function: In this technique, mathematical formulates are used by organisations for transforming their data into ciphertext format by effectively using a digital fingerprint. This technology was primarily used by corporations for maintaining the authenticity of their data.
In the current literature, the key issue which is addressed is that it is necessary to properly handle the process of cryptography so that third parties are not able to enter into the system and change the encryption codes. In case third parties are able to modify the encryption code then the data will not be able to decrypt which resulted in data loss. In some instances, there are chances of data leakage because the information is secured through encryption; however, the entire system is not completely secured. Another issue with the use of cryptography is that in case the keys get lost than the entire data lost as well; therefore, it is essential for organisations to protect the keys in order to prevent data loss.
In the current scenario, many issues have not been addressed; therefore, an advanced version of cryptography is needed in the future for ensuring that there are some alternatives available for protection of keys. In case of corporations, these issues are critical since they affect the security of their data. In case engineers are performing symmetric cryptography to protect their data while transferring and the receiver is situated in another country than it becomes difficult for them to send the required key to the receiver in time because it takes considerably longer to send a key to another party that is situated in another nation. Therefore, it is necessary to take care and protect the keys while using cryptography along with the network. In today’s rapidly changing business world, the number of enterprises which use the cryptography technology for protecting their data from data breaches and cyber-attacks has increased considerably. Along with the increase in the use of cryptography technology, the risks associated with the technology has increased substantially as well which makes it difficult for companies to protect their encryption and decryption keys for cyber criminals. Furthermore, it can be stated that the security of data packets is another significant concern for corporations. These data packets contain confidential and sensitive information of people, companies, and governments which can be leaked in the hands of cyber criminals. With the growing popularity of social media sites and online based services such as net banking and mobile wallet, the requirement of protecting data packets for unauthorised access has grown considerably. The cryptographic algorithms are designed is a way which assist organisations in protecting their networks from digital threats which attack on their network to collect confidential data. The technology enables enterprises to secure their data while transferring it across different nations which assist in avoiding data leak and unauthorised access. The cryptography security models ensure that confidentiality, integrity and availability of organisations’ data are maintained.
Conclusion
From this report it can be concluded that use of cryptography is emerging in every field as data is stored online and it can to be protected from hackers. Cryptography is used to make sure that secure communication take place over untrusted network as it involves multiple clients and serves over the public network. And increase the chances of attacks. Thus various challenges that are associated with cryptography technology have been discussed so that these issues could be resolved to attain good security. Cryptography protocols provide confidentiality and integrity of data and act as saviour for data leakage. In order to secure the data cryptography is not sufficient it is also necessary to secure the keys and there are various ways to secure the key in a cryptosystem.
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