Encryption For Internet Security

These days when no information seems safe online, people have been considering file and disk encryption. Sometimes, they don't even understand what it is. They just know it's a security measure they must take to ensure that they need not face the worst from being thieved of their data.

So what is encryption? Encryption is basically the process of presenting a piece on information in coded form. This means that human being will not be able to understand such information unless it is decoded or decrypted. Encryption is an effective way of protecting data traveling over the web and it is, in fact, one of the most used and reliable techniques in cryptography which is a body of scientific principles that promote safe communications.

Cryptogrpahy has a lot of ways but on the Internet, it it makes use of long series of numbers which can be decoded using certain algorithms. Some of these algorithms make use of only one key for encryption and decryption which means a key used for encrypting is the same key that will be used for decoding the data. In other cases, encryption uses one key and decryption will require another. The safer one to use is obviously the latter.

Generally, these keys are responsible for protecting the data that is contained in a piece of encrypted information. Internet browsers are currently using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to ensure that information entered by online customers are adequately protected as this travels from the customer's computer to the businessman's server. SSL encryption also relies on keys and this is the reason why before buying anything online, it is important that the site has an SSL certificate which means data entered into it will be traveling encrypted.

The rule is, the longer the key or the greater number of bits there are, the safer the encryption is. This is because it is generally easier to come up with different bit combinations and try them out. For example, if you have a 2-bit encryption, you can easily come up with four different combinations, try each one and eventually decrypt the information. However, with a 128-bit encryption, there are at least 309,485,009,821,345,068,724,781,056 combinations possible. According to experts, 128-bit encryption can be good enough for a period of ten years which is probably the amount of time it would take for all such combinations to be tried.

Internet security is mostly a matter of having a good understanding of the risks involved as well as knowing what must be done to reduce the risks. In terms of general Internet safety, one can rely on an IP changing software which is a program designed to allow a user to surf the Internet with his IP address hidden.

Remember that an IP address is a computer's unique identifier when it connects with any other computer on the Internet. This means that whatever a hacker can do, he can do it because he knows his victim's IP address. Naturally, when you hide your IP, you're safe from hackers. Thus, with an IP changer alone, you can be assured of significant Internet threat protection.