Encryption software is

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

that uses

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

to prevent unauthorized access to digital information. Cryptography is used to protect digital information on

computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ('' computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as ''programs'', ...

as well as the digital information that is sent to other computers over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

Classification

There are many software products which provide encryption. Software encryption uses a

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...

to obscure the content into

ciphertext In cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. Ciphertext is also known as encrypted or encoded information because it contains a form of the original plaintext ...

. One way to classify this type of software is the type of cipher used. Ciphers can be divided into two categories: public key ciphers (also known as asymmetric ciphers), and symmetric key ciphers. Encryption software can be based on either public key or symmetric key encryption. Another way to classify software encryption is to categorize its purpose. Using this approach, software encryption may be classified into software which encrypts " data in transit" and software which encrypts " data at rest". Data in transit generally uses public key ciphers, and data at rest generally uses symmetric key ciphers. Symmetric key ciphers can be further divided into stream ciphers and block ciphers. Stream ciphers typically encrypt plaintext a bit or byte at a time, and are most commonly used to encrypt real-time communications, such as audio and video information. The key is used to establish the initial state of a keystream generator, and the output of that generator is used to encrypt the plaintext. Block cipher algorithms split the plaintext into fixed-size blocks and encrypt one block at a time. For example, AES processes 16-byte blocks, while its predecessor DES encrypted blocks of eight bytes. There is also a well-known case where PKI is used for data in transit of data at rest.

Data in transit

Data in transit is data that is being sent over a

computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

. When the data is between two endpoints, any confidential information may be vulnerable. The payload (confidential information) can be encrypted to secure its confidentiality, as well as its integrity and validity. Often, the data in transit is between two entities that do not know each other - such as in the case of visiting a website. As establishing a relationship and securely sharing an encryption key to secure the information that will be exchanged, a set of roles, policies, and procedures to accomplish this has been developed; it is known as the

public key infrastructure A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to fac ...

, or PKI. Once PKI has established a secure connection, a symmetric key can be shared between endpoints. A symmetric key is preferred over the private and public keys as a symmetric cipher is much more efficient (uses fewer CPU cycles) than an asymmetric cipher. There are several methods for encrypting data in transit, such as IPsec, SCP, SFTP, SSH, OpenPGP and

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

Data at rest

Data at rest refers to data that has been saved to persistent storage. Data at rest is generally encrypted by a symmetric key. Encryption may be applied at different layers in the storage stack. For example, encryption can be configured at the disk layer, on a subset of a disk called a partition, on a

volume Volume is a measure of regions in three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch) ...

, which is a combination of disks or partitions, at the layer of a file system, or within user space applications such as

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

or other applications that run on the host

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. With full disk encryption, the entire disk is encrypted (except for the bits necessary to boot or access the disk when not using an unencrypted boot/preboot partition). As disks can be partitioned into multiple partitions, partition encryption can be used to encrypt individual disk partitions. Volumes, created by combining two or more partitions, can be encrypted using volume encryption. File systems, also composed of one or more partitions, can be encrypted using filesystem-level encryption. Directories are referred to as encrypted when the files within the directory are encrypted. File encryption encrypts a single file. Database encryption acts on the data to be stored, accepting unencrypted information and writing that information to persistent storage only after it has encrypted the data. Device-level encryption, a somewhat vague term that includes encryption-capable tape drives, can be used to offload the encryption tasks from the CPU.

Transit of data at rest

When there is a need to securely transmit data at rest, without the ability to create a secure connection, user space tools have been developed that support this need. These tools rely upon the receiver publishing their public key, and the sender being able to obtain that public key. The sender is then able to create a symmetric key to encrypt the information, and then use the receiver's public key to securely protect the transmission of the information and the symmetric key. This allows secure transmission of information from one party to another.

Performance

The performance of encryption software is measured relative to the speed of the CPU. Thus, cycles per byte (sometimes abbreviated cpb), a unit indicating the number of clock cycles a

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

will need per

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

of data processed, is the usual

unit of measurement A unit of measurement, or unit of measure, is a definite magnitude (mathematics), magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Any other qua ...

. Cycles per byte serve as a partial indicator of real-world

performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...

cryptographic Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...

functions. Applications may offer their own encryption called native encryption, including databases applications such as Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and MongoDB, and commonly rely on direct usage of CPU cycles for performance. This often impacts the desirability of encryption in businesses seeking greater security and ease of satisfying compliance by impacting the speed and scale of how data within organizations through to their partners.

References

External links

{{Cryptographic software