Encryption

Formerly data security on-site meant securing the data in a physical place (data center). But as data travels across networks, between countries and mobile devices and into the cloud or IoT, focusing on physical location alone will not cut it.

Securing valuable corporate information and preventing unauthorized access to sensitive business data is a priority in the current enterprise landscape. There are 2 major ways to secure data at rest or in transit: encryption and data masking. All the above are salient features of endpoint security and form integral part to make an enterprise more secured.

Encryption is the process of converting data into a form that can only be deciphered by those who have authority. Homomorphic encryption is an approach that encrypts sensitive plaintext data through a suitable algorithm, producing ciphertext which decrypts and reads in cleartext.

Data masking, on the other hand, replaces real data with “fake” data for users who shouldn’t access the real data, either due to their role in the company or because they are potential attackers. This ensures that sensitive data is obscured or de-identified.

Dynamic data masking adjusts the data based on user roles and privileges, securing real-time transactional systems and enhancing data privacy, compliance implementation, and maintenance.

Data masking retains the data in its original format without requiring a decryption key. The masked data set contains no references to the original information, making it worthless to attackers.

How does encryption work?

Encryption is a process of scrambling data with complex mathematical calculations and algorithms. In an encryption system, the generated key is called as Encryption Key While the key can be brute-forced, even if using a standard tamperproof encryption system this may require significant computational resources and skill to do effectively. A legal recipient would have the simple ability to then decrypt said message with their provided key from the sender.

Without the encryption key, access to your encrypted data will be lost and could cause you risk of retrieving it. In short, enterprises should have key management mechanisms such as data encryption tools and technologies for protection before going to the implementation stage.

Organizations are responsible for ensuring their key management practices enable the recovery of encrypted data in case a key is lost or destroyed. When encrypting removable media, part of that is anticipating how changing keys will impact access to encrypted storage on devices like USB drives and devising solutions as in keeping the old key hanging around for some time.

You can encrypt endpoint drives, servers, email, databases and files. The encryption method used should be appropriate to type of storage, size and diversity data that needs protecting as well the environments where these storages live in addition to threats they are meant help mitigation.

Public Key Encryption is a public key cryptography – some times called asymmetric encryption. Another Common use-case of public key cryptography is digital signatures where message is signed with the private key and can be verified by anyone who has access to sender’s public_key.

Selecting Encryption Solutions

Full disk encryption, Volume/virtual disk encryption and File/folder Encryption Solution are the three most common categories of encrypted solutions. Enterprises choosing encryption should focus on a complete set of methods that meet their security needs, not just one type commonly deployed.

The important factors that must be taken into account m decide on an encryption system would include, Centralized policy management Application and Database Transparency Low Latency Key Management Interoperability Support for hardware based cryptographic acceleration Compliance Regulation Obedience Monitoring capabilities.

All storage encryption solutions are not created equal-different capabilities for use cases Most users with multiple SAN and DIEP platforms likely won’t want feedback. Certain solution utilize servers on devices that need to be protected through the installation of additional software, others employ existing servers and incorporate this kind of functionality directly into operating systems.

The downside of using encryption – this however could diminish functionality or cause other problems, depending how much is changing in your network infrastructure and devices. When reviewing options, this loss of functionality should be offset against the additional security features and determine whether it is a tradeoff worth making for enterprises. The majority of such solutions can be seen as a last resort with other more feasible options, able to largely fulfil the security needs while requiring only server-side protection and end-user training.

Encryption Protocols

An encryption protocol is a sequence of steps for securing the communication and encrypting data using cryptographic algorithms.
Standard-compliant encryption protocols like IPSec, SSL/SLL,TLS,SSH,S/MIME and Kerberos protocol should be used in enterprise for compatibility and functionality. Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses, other than some common function names; generally they serve in different areas.

Here are the tips from Genx Systems on how to make encryption work for you better than ever:

• Avoid out-of-date encryption ciphers.
• Use longer encryption keys.
• Encrypt in layers.
• Keep your encryption keys encrypted
• Setting up encryption correctly
• External to the consideration of signed binaries is the digital signature compromise

Cloud and IoT drive encryption adoption

The rise of cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) devices have introduced a higher potential for efficiency with lower costs to enterprises.xmlbeans. However, these technological advancements can result in risk to corporate data.

While this data could be encrypted to help secure it, few businesses have turned to that. A survey by the Ponemon Institute and Gemalto for example, found that just 1 out of every 3 IT / IT security practitioners are encrypting sensitive corporate data in cloud apps

By contrast, close to three quarters of respondents (74%) have a cloud strategy and believe that apps and services are very important for their company’s operations: 81 per cent expect the importance of the cloud in future use cases.

Data encryption in the cloud presents challenges because data might be distributed across various geographic locations and not stored on devices dedicated solely to one enterprise. One approach is to require the cloud service provider to include data encryption as part of a service level agreement.

Additionally, as enterprises increasingly use IoT devices, many of these devices lack built-in security. Enhancing security can be achieved by encrypting the data transferred by IoT devices, especially those connecting wirelessly to the network.

In summary, data encryption can be employed to secure data both at rest and in motion within traditional enterprise environments, as well as in the emerging contexts of cloud computing and IoT deployments.