How To Stop Being Afraid of Data Encryption and Start Using It As Your Advantage

Debunk the most formulaic fears connected with data encryption and find out how it could become your reliable business partner. We wouldn’t advise you to use encryption or not. Our goal is to give you a prospect of what encryption is and what it is not. The goal is to free you from the superstitions and misconceptions, so you can decide for yourself whether it is worth your attention or not.

Back To School: Data Encryption Essentials You May Not Knew About

The old yet wise saying goes: 

“The past is your lesson. The present is your gift. The future is your motivation.”

The Egyptians did it with their hieroglyphs in inscriptions; the Spartans used it wrapping the messages around sticks; the middle ages guys used polyalphabetic substitutions to prevent a crack of an encrypted text.

In 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman presented “New Directions in Cryptography”: it was then possible to distribute the encryption key securely to the one who needs it.

The point here is the following: despite different methods of encryption, our precursors pursued one common goal — to hide sensitive information from third parties and keep it in a secret.

Time flew by, but the reasons to use encryption are more relevant than ever before.

Everybody Has Something To Preserve, Or Risks You Are Not Aware Of

At the present time, data encryption is not only one of the most powerful and effective data security methods, enterprises use world-wide, but also is the life-and-death question in terms of an organization’s life, career, and reputation. 

Nowadays it is probably the most indispensable data security method, caused by the growing email threats that aim to compromise your confidential information.

There are many ways to steal your data. But the main vector of all cyber-attacks is email. Emails which contain sensitive information such as credit card details, bank credentials, email account information, financial information, etc.

Think carefully about:

• What Information You Email Every Day;
• To Whom Your Emails Addressed; and
• From Whom You Get Your Emails.

If you answered those questions quick, here is another quiz for you:

Are you sure that when you click Send, your message has not been modified on its way to the recipient?

Now, if this question has got you thinking, you may want to know a little more about encryption.

Data Encryption In Real Life

The goal of data encryption is to protect confidentiality and provide security to data both in transit, and stored on devices.

What encryption does is transform data into a form of unreadable symbols — some digital code — that only people with a decryption key could read. Owning the encryption keys is the cornerstone of all encryption.

Encrypted data by design is a ciphertext, while unencrypted data is a plaintext.

The decryption is achieved by reversing the encryption, where the same steps are implemented in reverse order to decrypt the message.

There are algorithms that make data encryption happen.

Symmetric Encryption

These algorithms provide authentication and integrity for your data. Authentication allows you to verify the email source, while integrity ensures that both the contents and attachments of email have not been modified since it was sent.

Symmetric-key ciphers use a single key (a shared secret). Symmetric-key systems use only one key to perform the encrypting and decrypting of email at the same time.

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a symmetric-key algorithm that was developed to protect government classified information.

Asymmetric Encryption

The asymmetric encryption algorithm uses two different keys: public and private. The public key can be shared with everyone, while the private key must belong only to its owner.

The Rivest-Sharmir-Adleman (RSA) algorithm is a public-key encryption that is used to secure sensitive data when it is sent over an unsecure network.

Elliptic-Curve Cryptography

Traditional public key cryptography depends on the properties of large prime numbers and the computational difficulty of factoring those primes. Elliptical curve cryptography (ECC) enables another kind of public key cryptography that depends on the properties of the elliptic curve equation; the resulting cryptographic algorithms can be faster and more efficient and can produce comparable levels of security with shorter cryptographic keys.

Encryption is used to protect data stored on a system (encryption in place or encryption at rest); many internet protocols define mechanisms for encrypting data moving from one system to another (data in transit).

Why We Should Accept Contemporary Challenges Of Data Encryption

For any encryption method, the most basic method of attack is brute force.

Among the others, alternative methods of breaking a ciphertext are:

• Side-channel attacks;
• An error or flaw in system design;
• Cryptanalysis.

As mentioned above, the weakest link in today’s communication methods is email. The data sent over this channel of communication is always in danger.

The emails are sent over the SMTP protocol, which prescribes transition of data in a plain text through open communication channels (relays).

The modern email threats are:

• Phishing;
• Spear-phishing;
• Business Email Compromise;
• Man-In-The-Middle attacks;
• Social Engineering;
• Human Factor;
• Data Spoofing;
• Packet Injection;
• Email Credentials Hijacking;
• Cyber Infections.

To protect your emails from the internet, you need a solution that will meet your specific requirements, and fulfill your organizations’ needs.

If you are looking for supreme best-in-class enterprise email security protection for your emails, look no further than StealthMail.

Take Advantage Of Data Encryption With StealthMail

The major problem with many of the existing email security solutions is not partial end-to-end encryption, but rather the weak encryption algorithms.

They do not grant total control of the emails you send.

StealthMail provides comprehensive protection by using multi-level authentication processes.

As for data protection, StealthMail uses:

• Asynchronous key generation algorithms (ECC, RSA) encryption;
• Advanced data encryption algorithms (AES, Twofish);
• Proprietary Stealth Technology for data transfer;
• The second factor is used to establish a secure connection and enhance security;
• The Stealth link mechanism of delivering email content (data never leaves your company’s secure perimeter);
• Multi-stage identification of both parties: senders and recipients;
• Individual encryption of message content and its attachments;
• Storing keys in a secure perimeter of your company.

Keen Eye, Or Makings-up Of Your Mind

Remember, you do not have to be afraid of encryption.

The goal of encrypting is to ensure your confidential information is secured.    

And if you truly want to protect your sensitive data, please download datasheet at https://StealthMail.com/en/info to know more about the solution.