Information Security and Cryptography

Good Security Increases market Value

Information security is the process of protecting data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, destruction, modification.  The terms information security, computer security and information assurance are frequently used interchangeably.

 Early days of writing, heads of state and military commanders understood that it was necessary to provide some mechanism to protect the confidentiality of written correspondence and to have some means of detecting tampering. Persons desiring secure communications have used wax seals and other sealing devices since the early days of writing to signify the authenticity of documents, prevent tampering, and ensure confidentiality of correspondence.

There are many reasons why you should protect the information you use on your computer, including:

·         To make sure that your information can be accessed by only those who is having permission to access it.

·         To make sure that no one can change the information (information integrity).

·         Making sure that your information is available when you need it (by making back-up copies and, if appropriate, storing the back-up copies off-site).

One of the best feature uses in information security is ‘Cryptography’.

Information security uses cryptography to transform unusable information into a form that makes it unusable by anyone other than authorized user this is called encryption. The information which is encrypted transformed back to its original form by an authorized person through the process of decryption.

Cryptography provides information security with other useful applications including improved authentication methods, message digests, digital signatures, and encrypted network communications. Older less secure application such as telnet and ftp are slowly being replaced with more secure applications such as SSH that use encrypted network communications. Wireless communications can be encrypted using the WPA protocol. Software applications such as GNUPG or PGP can be used to encrypt data files and Email.

Actually cryptography is a huge subject and has big interesting history behind it.  It is one of the aspects of secure communication.