1. M2 Encryption techniques Gladys Nzita-Mak

2. What is encryption? Encryption is the method of having information such as text being converted into a format that makes no sense, but only to the person who has encrypted it. By having text, images, and other media encrypted, although it doesn’t necessarily prevent hackers, it reduces hackers as they are not able to read the encrypted data, not being able to access it. In order for the content to be available and able to use is that it has to be decrypted (with a decryption key) by the owner, making it accessible to them. Encryption uses public and private keys. As the public key is able to be used by anyone to encrypt any piece of data such as a message being send to a recipient, as it is sent off to the recipient, the recipient is to use the private key in order to be able to decrypt the message that has been sent to them, making them fully accessible to the encrypted message. In an organisation, sending encrypted messages is done as it increases security, for example if an organisation were to send something confidential, they would encrypt the message to make sure it is sent securely to the recipient.

3. Public key The public key is a key given by the computer and can be viewed by another computer in order to communicate in a secure way with them. With the public key, a user is able to type a message and encrypt it (plain text), being able to send out a secure message to the private key that matches it, for example if a user were to send a message to a recipient, they would encrypt it using the public key, being able to send an encrypted message out to the recipient so that the recipient with a private key can be able to decrypt it making it accessible to them. There are also public key systems that can be used to send encrypted messages, for example PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is used to securely send encrypted messages using the public and private key system.

4. Private key Each computer has their own and personal a private key. The private key is used when an encrypted message sent from a user with a public key and in order to decrypt the encrypted message, the private key is used. In order for public keys to send encrypted messages to others, they must have their private key so that they can sent it out to them to have the message decrypted. Examples for using a private key is that they can be used to create/produce digital signatures as part of authenticating messages (public keys verify digital signatures).