Encryption – Benefits and Drawbacks
Encryption is a form of data security in which information is converted to ciphertext. Only authorized people with the key can decipher the code and access the original plaintext information. Encryption is becoming a crucial factor in modern security; within this context, it refers to a method of securing sensitive information by making it unreadable and available only through decryption by duly authorized persons. As digital information grows rapidly, the need for encryption has become more crucial than ever, especially when it comes to finances, healthcare, or communication. However, with the great importance of encryption in securing data comes some inherent challenges. This paper outlines some of the major strengths and weaknesses of encryption, citing academic sources.
Benefits of Encryption
Data Security
The strongest advantage of encryption is that it actually protects sensitive data. Data intercepted during transmission or hacked from storage cannot be read without having an appropriate decryption key. This form of data security is very important in preventing unauthorized access to personal, financial, and proprietary information. Mehmood et al. (2019) also pointed out in their study that encryption technologies limit the risk of an organization falling victim to cyber attackers, which might lead to extensive monetary losses and erosion of public confidence. Encryption also promotes compliance with various privacy regulations, such as the GDPR and HIPAA, since they call for the protection of personal and medical data, respectively.
Integrity and Authenticity
Thus, encryption, in addition to ensuring confidentiality, preserves the data’s integrity and authenticity. All current-day encryption methods involve using hash functions to check whether the transmitted content was altered. This is especially true in the financial field, where a change of just a few digits may ultimately result in tremendous losses. According to Olaiya et al.’s (2024) findings, encryption also assures the identification of the sender of the information to ensure that there is no identity theft and the communication is credible.
Trust in Digital Communication
A significant portion of trust within the context of the internet relies on encryption. For instance, HTTPS secure methods of communication employ encryption to guarantee the privacy of the users’ correspondence with the websites. This ensures the attacker cannot intercept any data, such as passwords or credit card details. According to the authors Wylde et al. (2022), trust between the user and the service provider has improved because of the higher diffusion of encryption into the flow of digital information, thus promoting e-commerce and banking.
Drawbacks of Encryption
Performance and Resource Overhead
One of the major disadvantages of encryption is computational overhead. Encrypting and then decrypting the data involves a great deal of processing power. This may slow down the system when large volumes of data are processed or information needs to be sent in real-time. This problem is especially worrying in mobile devices and IoT systems. According to Maitra et al. (2019), encryption could introduce latency in network communications and perhaps require more powerful hardware, thereby increasing business costs.
Key Management Issues
Encryption can only be as good as the key management. Poor key management reduces even the most advanced encryption algorithms to a farce. Not only does the loss or theft of an encryption key prevent access to encrypted data, which may become irretrievable with time, but mismanagement of encryption keys has been stated more than once as one of the leading reasons for various security breaches. A study by Goel et al. (2020) indicated that improper key management is a big vulnerability, especially in cloud computing, where end users might not have full control of the encryption key.
Potential for Abuse
While encryption is very important in the protection of privacy, it can also be utilized by malicious parties to hide their illegal activities. Criminals and terrorists have, time and again, been known to use encryption to communicate securely, making it very hard to track their activities by law enforcement agencies. This has spawned debates over the need for “backdoors” in encryption systems that would allow government agencies to access them in the interest of national security. However, many experts warn that such vulnerabilities may undermine the general security of encryption systems. In this regard, Olaiya et al. (2024) state that the creation of backdoors weakens encryption, which might be utilized by hackers, causing more harm than good.
Conclusion
Encryption remains among the strongest ways through which digital information is secured and trust developed online. Its benefits of security, integrity, and the building of trust are not in dispute, especially as the world continues to grapple with evolving cyber threats. However, it is not without its downsides. Major concerns with regard to performance, key management, and the potential for abuse create significant problems that have to be overcome with a well-planned policy and setup. This is well-represented in the current debate on backdoors in the trade-off between privacy and security, which has no easy answer in sight. Within all these restrictions, encryption still forms one of the building blocks of modern cybersecurity infrastructure.
References
Maitra, S., Richards, D., Abdelgawad, A., & Yelamarthi, K. (2019, March). Performance evaluation of IoT encryption algorithms: memory, timing, and energy. In 2019 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Mehmood, M. S., Shahid, M. R., Jamil, A., Ashraf, R., Mahmood, T., & Mehmood, A. (2019, November). A comprehensive literature review of data encryption techniques in cloud computing and IoT environment. In 2019 8th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies (ICICT) (pp. 54–59). IEEE.
Olaiya, O. P., Adesoga, T. O., Adebayo, A. A., Sotomi, F. M., Adigun, O. A., & Ezeliora, P. M. (2024). Encryption techniques for financial data security in fintech applications. International Journal of Science and Research Archive, 12(1), 2942-2949.
Wylde, V., Rawindaran, N., Lawrence, J., Balasubramanian, R., Prakash, E., Jayal, A., … & Platts, J. (2022). Cybersecurity, data privacy, and blockchain: A review. SN computer science, 3(2), 127.
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Encryption – Benefits and Drawbacks
Papers on encryption and the pros and cons of using it.