What is encryption?
Whilst most people are familiar with the term encryption, many have an outdated and misguided idea of what it actually entails. We are all familiar with that movie scene where some guy sits in a dark room surrounded by computers, hacking and encrypting a large organisation's data. Whilst this of course does happen, it is not an accurate depiction of how encryption is used by individuals for day-to-day activities.
Encryption is the technique of scrambling or enciphering the material in a particular file so that only the designated recipients have the ability to decipher it. Encryption causes the content of the document to be substituted by letters, numbers and symbols to create a cipher. The original document will then only be accessible to those possessing a key, which is made up of the pattern of which the cipher was encoded. Thus, anyone who does not have access to this key will not be able to decrypt and understand the document.
Why is encryption important?
Encryption is absolutely necessary when storing and sharing sensitive information in order to evade unauthorised and illegal processing of personal data. As stated by theverge.com, encryption is a fundamental building block of network security. In 2015 alone, Software Alliance found that 423 million identities had been stolen. This suggests that encryption is absolutely a necessary component of digital life in today's world. Private information such as financial and social security data, is transmitted online daily. Thus, in order to allow this transmission to occur safely, all pupils would be more protected through investing in encryption.
What happens without encryption?
In some industries, not encrypting sensitive material is punishable. For example, the Greater Manchester Police was allocated a penalty of £150,000 when an unencrypted USB stick was stolen from an officers home. The USB contained information regarding current police investigations and included private information of over 1,000 individuals. The stick was not password protected and completely unencrypted.
The penalty was issued under the pretence that the Greater Manchester Police had failed to introduce convenient technical procedures for the loss of private information. There had been an order which required employees to use encrypted memory sticks, however this rule was never enforced and there were no restrictions on the downloading of material onto external hard drives.
In this case, had the files in question been encrypted, the 1,000 individuals whose information was on the stick would not have been put in danger, and the police would not have been handed the penalty.
Encryption at AxCrypt
Here at AxCrypt we use Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is an encryption algorithm that is largely considered to be the most secure of those available. The AxCrypt Premium and Business subscription services provide 256-bit encryption, which presents security that is virtually impossible to bypass. It would take millions of years to crack it even for the fastest available computers!
In a few words
So in short, we need encryption because as private users or companies we are dealing with massive data breaches, increasing in every passing day. Encryption securely protects data that you don't want anyone else to have access. It can help protect data you send, receive, and store such as text messages stored on your smartphone, running logs saved on your fitness watch, and banking information sent through your online account.
AxCrypt provides all of this, you can download the software on Windows, macOS as also on androids under that link: https://www.axcrypt.net/download