One way to mitigate against common cybersecurity threats is to encrypt sensitive or valuable data. Encryption is the process of making data unreadable and unusable to unauthorized viewers. To use or read encrypted data, it must be decrypted, which requires the use of a secret key.
There are two top-level types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric encryption uses the same key to encrypt and decrypt the data. Asymmetric encryption uses a public key and private key pair. Either key can encrypt data, but the key used to encrypt can’t be used to decrypt encrypted data. To decrypt, you need a paired key. For example, if the public key is used to encrypt, then only the corresponding private key can be used to decrypt. Asymmetric encryption is used for things such accessing sites on the internet using the HTTPS protocol and electronic data signing solutions. Encryption may protect data at rest, or in transit.
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