Importance of encryption
As someone who majored in information security, I know the importance of encryption very well and so I felt the need to educate the masses on it.
Encryption is the act of encoding data to render it unintelligible to someone who doesn’t have the authorization to access the data. Once data is encrypted, only authorized parties who have a “key” can read it or use it. That is if the encryption method is effective it should completely protect data from unauthorized access.
Now to the importance of encryption, encryption is a basic but vital component of data privacy and security, A great deal of confidential information transmitted online including financial information and Social Security Numbers and it is important to keep that information safe.
One would ask how does encryption work? Well, at its most basic level, encryption is when the encryptor substitutes letters, numbers, and symbols with other characters to create a cipher. A cipher is the set of characters that are standing in for the original data. Whoever creates the cipher possesses the key to decoding it. The “key” is a number that describes the mathematical process by which the cipher was encoded.
You can do this manually which is quite laborious or you can use a software solution to scramble the data with an algorithm and create an encryption key. A computer or a human cannot read the real data without the key if someone without the key were to access the data, it would be meaningless and useless. The intended user can unscramble or “decrypt” the data using their generated encryption key.
Questions like do companies really need to put forth the effort to invest in data encryption for their online transactions and processes? Come up well, here are some reasons why they should.
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The installation and use of certain uncertified online resources and applications may cause intrusions and security breaches. When this happens, your sensitive data may get exposed to harmful online agents. Data encryption prevents this from happening by making sure that your confidential data is scrambled and difficult to read by unauthorized users.
Competition and business rivalry mean that companies are always looking to access their competitors’ confidential data to learn their next business moves. This has led to the growth of the hacking business, where tech-savvy individuals hack companies’ online resources for pay. Data encryption will ensure that anyone who is not supposed to access your data is not able to read, understand, or use the data, even when they succeed in getting past your security systems.
As someone who's now in Salesforce I feel like it is important for future software developers to understand encryption in depth so they can develop systems that can withstand attacks and for the masses to also get an insight.
REFERENCE
https://www.techwell.com/techwell-insights/2019/10/importance-data-encryption-cybersecurity
