Technology is supposed to make our daily lives easier and more efficient. Of course, if you fail to understand modern technology or realize the importance of data security, you and your company will be vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Companies aren’t immune to security breaches, but implementing data encryption is the safest way to protect confidential information and your organization’s reputation with current and future clients. Two important reasons why you must encrypt your data are because of how easy and how important it is. Encryption and data security are becoming easier for IT pros, as more and more organizations implement it. Knowing it’s importance will only improve it further, with data security now the highest priority.
We all understand how important safeguarding personal information and data is to customers, which is why all documents must be encrypted. But what does this actually mean? Encryption is the process of converting information or data into an indecipherable code while in transit or storage. This prevents any unauthorized access from malicious third-parties and keeps your personal information under lock and key.
The storing and sharing of sensitive data, whether it’s social security numbers or personal financial figures, can be risky business. Far too many businesses fall victim to hackers who take advantage of easily accessible usernames and passwords. What you think of as a “hard to crack” password, hackers think of it as “like taking candy from a baby.” Encryption will help eliminate this issues, as it protects individuals and organizations from the security nightmares of identity theft, cyber-fraud and the hefty price of data being lost or stolen or ransomed off.
Nowadays with modern-style encryption, data is transmitted and scrambled in such a way that it can only be decrypted by someone possessing the actual encryption key. It makes your life easier, and more importantly, makes it as hard as possible for whomever is trying to hack into your stuff.
The two types of encryption are Public Key and Symmetric Key. Public Key Encryption uses two different types of keys, a public (hence the name) and a private one as well. So if a user needs to send sensitive data over the Internet safely, the public key is used to encrypt the data in question, but the data can only be encrypted by the recipient using their own private key. This is used mostly to send emails and to digitally sign documents. With Symmetric Key Encryption method, both the sender and receiver use the same key. This is done to simplify the process, while making it run faster. There is still a chance the key and the data can be compromised during transit over the internet.
The benefits of encryption are not only restricted to internet use. You can also encrypt data on your computer, hard drives, USB, mobile devices, etc. This will prevent misuse of the data if the device has been hacked, lost or stolen. The importance of encryption is all in the numbers. Statistics have shown that cyber crime is rising dramatically. All you need to do is watch the news to know of this. All of this means that the need for encryption to keep your data secure is imperative. Encryption keeps your confidential data secret and gives your customers some comfort in knowing that their data doesn’t up in the wrong hands. You really can’t put a price on “peace of mind”, can you?
