Analysis of Cryptography
Because of growth within your organization, information and policies are in many locations and often poorly maintained. Your company has decided to start a knowledge base for each department that can be accessed by any employee on the company’s intranet. Your manager is aware of your success at the career fair and security presentation at the high school and has selected you to author the first article from your department on cryptography, encryption, and cryptanalysis.
Write 2- to 3-page knowledge base article for your company’s intranet about encryption and cryptanalysis basics.
Define cryptography, cryptanalysis, and cryptology.
Explain the role and importance of cryptography for your company’s cybersecurity.
Summarize threats to the company from cryptanalysis.
Identify at least 5 specific tools or techniques used in cryptography. Briefly explain each tool or technique you selected, including information like its attributes and the solution it provides.
Analysis of Cryptography
With the organization’s rapid growth, information management has become more imperative. Thus, the need for a company’s intranet to provide a secured chancel whereby different employees collaborate, communicate, and manage related organizational tasks easily. Therefore, to achieve a smooth flow of functions, adopting the cryptographic system is imperative. According to statistics, more than 80% of organizations encrypt their web traffic as they seek to protect sensitive data while meeting imposed security and privacy regulations. Cryptography has become an essential tool in achieving this protection (Hodgson, 2019). This paper analyses cryptography, its cybersecurity roles, and tools and techniques used in cryptography.
Cryptography entails the methods, means, or principles used for information transfers by adopting algorithms to hide semantic content and prevent unauthorized malicious use. It converts an input, for essence, message in plaintext to ciphertext, an encrypted output using an algorithm and key. Cryptography provides an integrated layer of diffuse for an origination that enhance the protection of communications and transactions, enhance the confidentiality of data its integrity, and prevent potential tampering of information either storage or transit., thus this is an imperative infrastructure; thus, the company needs to adopt cryptographical solutions to secure sensitive data (Wang, 2020).
Cryptanalysis entails the process of analyzing and identifying weak spots of cryptography algorithms. It often offers breaches of these systems allowing for the decryption of encrypted messages even with the absence of the cryptographic keys. It is often used by attackers that seek to gain access to protected information and data. This process is a potential security threat for an organization.
On the other hand, Cryptology entails the science of secretive form of storage of data and communication. It is the interaction of cryptography and cryptanalysis to ensure only legitimate users can access the secretly stored data.
Roles and importance of cryptography for the company’s cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is one of the leading organizational priorities, a breach of this can lead to severe consequences that will cause detrimental effects financially and reputation-wise. Herein are the security-related roles of cryptography with regards to the company’s cybersecurity;
Identification and authentication
Cryptography ensures that before any information transfer is initiated, the sender’s and receivers’ identities should be verified and authenticated to prevent the erroneous transfer of information to the unintended recipient that will jeopardize the integrity of the information. In these cases, message authentication codes and digital signatures come are used to prove the identity and authenticity of the sender and recipient.
Integrity
Adopting cryptography ensures in-depth verification and authentication from the recipient to ensure that the message transferred is not altered during storage or transit. The organization comprises different departments with totally different functions; thus, the information transfer process should protect the integrity of the information to prevent alterations that could lead to subsequent consequences. Cryptography uses hashing algorithms that provide specific codes that protect information and data transit, so it gets to the intended receiver unaltered (Hodgson, 2019).
Non-Repudiation
There is an increase in information transferred between employees in such an organization as ours. With the recent growth, information is often transferred with little or no accountability. Cryptography is essential for no repudiation to ensure that the senders and recipients of the information are held accountable. Cryptograph uses digital signatures to label the source of information and prevent senders’ denial of the information. Notably, it ensures that both senders and receivers are accountable for information transfer, preventing anonymity (Hodgson, 2019).
Confidentiality
Confidentiality of information, especially in such a large organization, is paramount. The potential breach of information confidentiality can jeopardize the organization’s reputation as it handles employees’ personally identifiable information and the client’s classified information. A cryptographic algorithm is used to achieve confidentiality and prevent possible authorized access. The information is coded where only the sender and recipient have the keys to decrypt the information. This ensures that information confidentiality is protected in all lifecycles (Boonkrong, 2021).
Threats from cryptanalysis to the company
Cryptanalysis entails the process of identifying weak spots in cryptographic algorithms and subsequently using them to decipher the protected ciphertext (Chakrabarti, 2021). These processes possess a security threat and a potential source of a security breach where attackers deduce the weakness from the algorithm rather than its applications. In turn, uses this weakness to find the secret key by conducting a total break where the attacker finds the secret key, or global deduction where he decrypts the information without the secret distinguishing the ciphertexts from the encryption, potentially accessing unauthorized information.
Tools and techniques used in cryptography
Cybersecurity professionals use cryptography tools to fortify the organization’s computer defense system. Herein are five cryptography tools and techniques;
Security tokens -A security tokens are a device that contains individual information and is often used during authentication. For essence, for one to access a company’s network service, they plug in the security tokens system that allows them to gain access, thus preventing unauthorized access to classified information and data.
Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) -The java crypto Architecture employs java programming language with inbuilt cryptographic functions integrated with the application programming interface. The JCA uses the programming interface to validate employees using encrypted and managing keys. These generate random numbers that are specific to an individual that is used for validation.
Sign tool is another cryptography tool embedded in the Microsoft operating system to verify signatures and digitally sign documents. Adopting this security tool ensures that the documents are not tampered with in storage or transit within the company.
Key-based authentication is another cryptography tool that uses asymmetric algorithms rather than passwords to authenticate a person’s identity. This is a safer form of authentication as it requires the system to decrypt
Docker is another essential tool in cryptographic systems whereby information stored in this tool is encrypted and thus cannot be accessed unless a person has an access key. This prevents authorized access to information or potential adversities (Wang, 2020).
Using this cryptography tool is a step closer to combating cyber security threats by ensuring safe transit and storage of information.
References
Boonkrong, S. (2021). Authentication and Access Control: Practical Cryptography Methods and Tools. Apress.
Chakrabarti, S., & Babu, G. S. (2021). Security Threat Detection and Cryptanalysis of Dynamic and Random S Box Based Two-Fish Algorithm. International Journal, 10(2).
Hodgson, R. (2019). Solving the security challenges of IoT with public-key cryptography. Network Security, 2019(1), 17-19.
Wang, S., Rohde, M., & Ali, A. (2020, January). Quantum cryptography and simulation: Tools and techniques. In Proceedings of the 2020 4th International Conference on Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (pp. 36-41).
