Book Image

Modern Cryptography for Cybersecurity Professionals

By : Lisa Bock
Book Image

Modern Cryptography for Cybersecurity Professionals

By: Lisa Bock

Overview of this book

In today's world, it is important to have confidence in your data storage and transmission strategy. Cryptography can provide you with this confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. But are you aware of just what exactly is involved in using cryptographic techniques? Modern Cryptography for Cybersecurity Professionals helps you to gain a better understanding of the cryptographic elements necessary to secure your data. The book begins by helping you to understand why we need to secure data and how encryption can provide protection, whether it be in motion or at rest. You'll then delve into symmetric and asymmetric encryption and discover how a hash is used. As you advance, you'll see how the public key infrastructure (PKI) and certificates build trust between parties, so that we can confidently encrypt and exchange data. Finally, you'll explore the practical applications of cryptographic techniques, including passwords, email, and blockchain technology, along with securely transmitting data using a virtual private network (VPN). By the end of this cryptography book, you'll have gained a solid understanding of cryptographic techniques and terms, learned how symmetric and asymmetric encryption and hashed are used, and recognized the importance of key management and the PKI.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Securing Our Data
5
Section 2: Understanding Cryptographic Techniques
9
Section 3: Applying Cryptography in Today's World

Chapter 2: The Evolution of Ciphers

Over the last several centuries, we have seen advancements in civilization, along with improvements in technology. As a result, we have seen an evolution in the methods used to conceal information. To set the foundation for more advanced topics that we will be covering in this book, we'll review some ancient techniques to conceal information. We'll start with a brief overview of some early ways to hide messages. We'll learn how data was concealed using a tool called a scytale, along with a radical method using a tattoo etched on a trusted servant's head. We'll then see how data was concealed using monoalphabetic and then polyalphabetic ciphers along with an example of each, using both the Caesar and Vigenère ciphers.

We'll then see how the effect of war led to advances in the way to encode and securely transmit messages. We'll discover how Claude Shannon, whose early research is still influential in modern...