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

Entering the digital age

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, computers started populating offices, industry, and government organizations. It soon became apparent that it was necessary to protect data in some way from prying eyes.

However, several decades earlier, the concept of encrypting data was already in the works. In this section, we'll learn how Claude Shannon, an American mathematician and cryptographer, outlined how to encrypt digital data. We'll then examine the beginnings of the DES, with the development of the Feistel and Lucifer ciphers in the 1970s, as scientists recognized the need to secure digital data.

Let's begin by learning about Shannon and his contributions to the field of computing and cryptography.

Innovating in the field of computing

In 1941, Claude Shannon was a young scientist working at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs). Shannon worked at Bell Labs conducting research on Boolean algebra and circuit switching. The research would...