Do you know that the average cost of a mega data breach in 2024, taking up 50-60 million records, has risen to $332 million? Cyberattacks now become more sophisticated and more rampant. Businesses can no longer disregard encryption as an important key to protecting sensitive information because it is no longer about precaution but necessity in the increasingly high-stakes digital scene.
What is encryption and why does it matter?
So, what does encryption really do? It scrambles information into a code unreadable without the right decryption key. This therefore means, even if the data is intercepted in the process of transmission, it makes little or no sense.
In this era of cyber threats, security of the information being transferred or stored cannot be compromised. Encryption ensures that data remains private and secure during its movement within the internet or storage in the cloud.
Here’s why data security encryption matters:
- Personal and sensitive data, like credit card numbers and health records, are protected.
- Meets the compliance requirements of organizations like the National Institute of Standards.
- Denies hackers access to sensitive information during cyber-attacks.
- Network encryption changes data into a format that is unreadable, thus limiting the dangers of new threats.
Types of Data Encryption and Their Operations
Let’s break down the different forms of data encryption and how they function:
1. Symmetric Encryption
Symmetric encryption uses a single cryptographic key for both encrypting and decrypting data, making it efficient for large datasets. Its speed and simplicity make it ideal for securing data at rest and in transit.
Key Features
- Relies on a shared secret key, which both the sender and recipient must securely manage.
- Offers high performance for bulk encryption tasks.
Examples of encryption key Algorithms
- AES: A strong and widely used algorithm, known for its strength and efficiency.
- DES: The first encryption algorithm, although outdated due to vulnerabilities, is the foundation of modern symmetric encryption.
Asymmetric encryption is used in cloud storage systems, database encryption, and high-speed network communications.
2. Asymmetric Encryption
Also known as public key cryptography, asymmetric encryption ensures data is encrypted with a public key and decrypted with a private key. In this scenario, even if the public key is compromised, it will keep the data safe.
Key Features
- Increases security since the private keys are not required to be shared.
- This encryption is best suited for the protection of data in transmission, including emails, digital signatures, and secure web communications.
Examples of Important Encryption Algorithms
- RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman): One of the most widely used algorithms for encrypting data in motion and validating personal information.
- ECC: It provides the same security as RSA but with much smaller key sizes, hence faster and thus more plausible for mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
The underlying protocol makes use of asymmetric encryption in Transport Layer Security (TLS), thus ensuring internet communication is secure and encrypted.
3. Hashing
Hashing is different from encryption because it is one-way. It transforms data into a fixed-length hash, ensuring that data integrity is maintained but not decryption. Hashing is mostly used in password protection and file integrity verification.
Key Features
- Detects unauthorized data modification.
- One-way, meaning it's not suitable for confidentiality but suitable for integrity.
Examples of Algorithms
- SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm): Mostly applied in digital certificates and blockchain technology.
- MD5: An older algorithm that, while now considered insecure, was widely used for creating checksums.
While hashing doesn’t encrypt data for confidentiality, it is vital to ensure data authenticity and consistency.
How Encryption Supports Modern IT and DLP
These are the major application areas where DLP meets IT infrastructure:
Key Applications
- Cloud Services: Symmetric encryption for access data, and hashes keep a file integrity intact
- Secure Communication: Applications of Asymmetric Encryption Use are TLS and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
- DLP Tools: Applied through encryption so data isn't readable to a threat if a breach occurred.
For example, organizations encrypt customer payment details with AES, ensuring the data remains useless to unauthorized users even if accessed. Similarly, asymmetric encryption secures remote employee communications, maintaining confidentiality across distributed teams.
How Encryption Enhances Data Loss Prevention
Here’s how it really helps enhance your data protection efforts:
1. Makes Brute Force Attacks Impossible
This essentially makes millions of possible decryption keys hit one by one through the process of brute force, as when an attacker attempts to break through and get your data, your encryption keys can ensure it to be read or made intelligible only through a decryption key. Hence, your information would not even matter or give value to them.
2. Protection for Internet Protocol-Based Communication
Consider every email and file transfer, in addition to online communication, as all these are susceptible to being intercepted during their travel across the internet. Encryption protocols such as SSL and TLS ensure that this data will not be readable if some bad guy intercepts it. This is particularly important for securing customer communications or sensitive business information over email or online chat.
3. Encrypts Data at Rest
When data is sitting on a computer or server, it becomes vulnerable to someone with unauthorized access to the system. Here’s where DLP encryption comes into its own. With encryption for data at rest-meaning data that’s not currently being used, but is sitting, waiting-the lock can be applied, and it means that if a hacker were able to penetrate other security layers, all they’d find is data they cannot read. For instance, if a company encrypts the details of customer payments, hackers will not be able to decipher anything even if they break into their server.
What Does Encryption Technology Do for Data Security?
Here is a quick glance on encryption becoming an indispensable tool within data loss prevention systems, ensuring data remains protected even if stolen.
Protects Communication
Whether sending e-mails, sharing files or even chat, encryption makes sure all communications are done in an encrypted manner. This way, even when the messages or files of yours have been intercepted by a party unauthorized to do so, they won't be able to decipher them. This feature is crucial to protect sensitive business discussions, client information, or personal communications.
Compliance Regulations
Encryption is very important to help meet regulatory requirements. Many standards, including NIST, base their data security and privacy on encryption protocols. Selecting encryption will help your organization comply with industry regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS, concerning strong data protection.
Prevent Unauthorized Access
Encryption ensures that in case of a breach or interception without authorization, the information remains unreadable. In case an unauthorized access gains access to the encrypted data, it cannot utilize or misuse it without the decryption key. Therefore, additional defense is ensured in not having unauthorized access resulting in data loss or exploitation.
Protects Against Decryption Attempts
Encrypted information will make access to sensitive information difficult for intruders. They cannot carry out decryption since decrypting depends on the appropriate cryptographic key. Advanced algorithms that go into its encryption mean if any hacker succeeded in breaking through, this would be at the least rate of zero per cent to decrypt the data. Proper key management makes only authorized users get access for decryption.
Deploying encryption as a part of your DLP can help you secure your organization’s sensitive information, comply with regulatory standards, and minimize data breach risk significantly.
Encryption is the backbone of strong data loss prevention strategies. It helps protect sensitive data from the most advanced threats. It secures communication and data at rest, thus enabling organizations to maintain confidentiality and compliance.
With robust Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools like Fidelis Network® DLP, your organization stays secure, compliant, and resilient against evolving threats.
Find out how Fidelis Security protects your most sensitive data through advanced encryption and innovative DLP solutions. Learn more.
Frequently Ask Questions
What is the purpose of encryption?
Encryption serves primarily to keep secret and confidential information in unreadable format. Thus, a third party is prevented from accessing the information when no decryption key exists. This makes encryption crucial as an aspect of safety in terms of data breach protection, protection of personal information, and confidentiality in communications. Moreover, the act ensures that the organization will follow the required regulations; thus, encryption has been crucial in a firm’s toolbox.
Give a list of encryption algorithms.
Encryption algorithms differ depending on the type of encryption used:
Symmetric Algorithms:
- AES (Advanced Encryption Standard): Fast, secure and popular
- DES (Data Encryption Standard): Obsolete but historic
- Blowfish: Speed and flexibility.
- Asymmetric Algorithms:
- RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman): Widely used for secure communication.
- ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography): Suitable for mobiles and IoT.
These encryption algorithms use cryptographic keys that would change data, hence their proper use in various applications.
How do Data Loss Prevention Tools use encryption?
Data Loss Prevention tools embrace encryption to protect such sensitive data against unauthorized access. Even if data is intercepted or stolen, it will be encrypted and cannot be read without the correct decryption key.
DLP tools may:
- Encrypt files before transferring them across the network.
- Automatically apply encryption to sensitive data stored in the cloud.
- Ensure encrypted backups for compliance and recovery.
With DLP, a holistic security strategy that brings together encryption, and others, it keeps your key information secure.
