Encryption is a word with a touch of mystery added to it. There is a misconception that the concept of encryption belongs to the digital age. That’s not true. If we look back on the memory lane of history, encryption has always played a pivotal role.
Once upon a time, encryption was all about safeguarding royal secrets and war strategies, and as we say, history repeats itself. In the modern era, there is nothing more important than protecting your privacy and personal information.
The modern age answer to this is digital encryption, but they are not entirely foolproof. With technology and quantum computing on the rise, you have got to stay one step ahead at all times to protect your data and online identity. Read along to get familiar with the world of encryption and its evolution.
Evolution of Encryption: From Scytale to Quantum Cryptography
As mentioned earlier, encryption did not sprout out in a single day. It is a practice of our ancestors, evolving over several centuries. Evolution is necessary for everything in all aspects to pass the test of time. Unless it accommodates and answers to the needs of the present, it will become outdated.
Encryption is all about writing and hiding messages in plain sight. It is right there in front of you, but it will not make any sense unless you know exactly how to decode it. The phrase, knowledge is power defines the concept of encryption. Kingdoms used spies to extract secret knowledge and transfer it in encrypted texts. World governments still practice this. The method has evolved, but the base remains the same.
Encryption is not just about transferring data securely but also about saving information from reaching the wrong kind of people. It is basically about the safety and protection of all kinds of information.
According to ExpressVPN’s recent blog post, the history of encryption goes back to the 7th century when the most feared warriors of the world, the Spartans, came up with Scytale to encrypt their messages. In the following centuries, Caesar came up with a method that was later named the Caesar cipher.
During World War II, new knitting patterns were designed for the very purpose of passing on secret messages. The Washington Post has covered an article on how the black communities who were enslaved planned and communicated their escape routes from the plantations using an intricately braided hairstyle called the Departes. It, when translated, means to depart.
The Enigma machine developed during the Second World War more or less sowed the seeds of modern cryptography. Encryption so far has been used within government organizations and other secret agencies. But it became a thing of common with the introduction of the World Wide Web and the rise of the Internet.
At present, Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) are used across the world. Quantum Cryptography, backed by quantum mechanics and quantum particles, has the power to create encryption keys that cannot be bypassed.
Understanding Encryption and Its Role in the Digital Age
To understand Encryption in simple words, it encrypts your data into codes. Even if someone tries to steal your data, without the right encryption key and access, the file will be useless. It will be a complete gibberish to them. Encryption thus encodes your data, and only authorized personnel can decode them.
Encryption is not exclusive to one specific kind of data. World governments use them to protect national security, hospitals use them to protect patient confidentiality, and private organizations use them to protect their user account information. Encryption is needed everywhere.
We live in a world where people try to hack an organization’s system for money and fun. With the right kind of encryption, we can defend ourselves. According to ExpressVPN, the AES 256-bit cryptographic key cannot be bypassed even by the most powerful supercomputers. Even the US government uses this kind of encryption to protect their sensitive and classified files and data. That is a real-life example of how secure and trustworthy this method of encryption is.
Encryption has become a thing of everyday events. We send a message to some on a social platform; those messages use end-to-end encryption to safeguard your privacy. What you share is between you and the end receiver. You transfer money to someone using a mobile app, and they use AES 256-bit for secure transactions.
While creating a new account on an online platform, you would have noticed the pop-up requesting you to create a strong password. A strong password is not just the length of it but the combination as well. The more random your password is, the more difficult it is to decode it. And that is also why they recommend you to change your passwords regularly.
The world has gone crazy about cryptocurrencies and bitcoins. Everyone is investing in it, and we have witnessed people becoming millionaires overnight. But the thing defending it all is the underlying encryption. They employ Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to defend the system and transactions from malicious cyber forces.
We browse through many websites and save our user data across several platforms. Without data encryption, anyone can access our personal information and bank details. The world has shifted to cloud storage and services. For the common public, it is nothing more than storing data in thin air. That thin air is more valuable than anything else in this world.
If a cyber attacker snatches away your data from thin air, who will protect the data from being used against you? Encryption will. Even if they somehow manage to lay hands on your information, they will not be able to read it since everything will be encoded in a random yet perfectly built algorithm.
The Future of Encryption and its Challenges
Technology is just a tool, but how we use it and what we use it for is what matters. While world governments, security experts, and organizations are working on a tamper-proof encryption system, the introduction of quantum computing poses a huge threat to everything they have so far worked on.
Quantum computing is capable of decoding even the most complex and superior encryption algorithms. In the hands of cyber attackers, it can cause serious damage to safety and security protocols built across the globe.
The amount of time and money invested in finding an encryption method that can compete with the powers of Quantum computing gave birth to the concept of Quantum cryptography. Both the Quantum and Post Quantum cryptography are relatively new algorithms in the field of encryption. But they are a one-of-a-kind invention with a promising future.
The other downside of developing and implementing new cryptographic inventions is the misuse of the technology. The very thing that protects a law-abiding citizen also protects a criminal. It makes investigation and data extraction difficult for police law enforcement and other intelligence agencies.
The attackers and criminals use this to their advantage and can protect their secrets and identity. The exceptions and backdoors created to get hold of these criminals question the very foundation of data protection and privacy. The system should be tamper-proof at all costs.
Awareness and advertisements about cyber attackers and the threats they pose are being shared with the general public. But many of them still fall prey to their evil tricks. One wrong step and the whole foundation of the organization will come down. One click on a malicious link, and the attackers will easily extract the encryption key.
It is more or less like providing your debit card and the security pin to a total stranger. They can literally wipe out your account and destroy your financial stability. That’s why we say protecting the encryption key is as important as protecting the data in itself.
That’s where the use of Homomorphic encryption comes into play. This is the future of modern encryption. There is no need to decode the encryption with a key. One can directly perform mathematical computations on the encrypted data without decoding it.
Encryption: The Past, the Present, and the Future
The world of encryption is vast and ever-growing. Experts are working round the clock to defend against new threats and find solutions for potential threats. Without encryption and cryptography, world history wouldn’t be what it is today. World countries would have succumbed to war and terrorism long back. Encryption, in a way, maintains peace among countries.
Encryption powers the foundation of trust that people have in their government and other private organizations. Without the promise of safety, no one would keep their money in a bank, no one would vote for a government, and catfishing and identity theft would have collapsed the social structure.
The future of security is in the hands of cryptography. The evolution of encryption, from spears and shields to quantum-proof security, is what the future relies on. With human testing, there is a possibility of error, but the current trend is using artificial intelligence (AI). With a very minute space for error, they can help resolve loopholes, identify flaws in the system, and develop an error-free security system.
The intention is not to create panic but to bring out the truth behind encoding. You can trust the new age technologies to provide unbreakable security.
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