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

Summary

In this chapter, we learned about some of the early uses of encryption. We saw how primitive methods such as tattoos, along with tools such as the scytale, were used to conceal information. We then took a closer look at the differences between a monoalphabetic and polyalphabetic cipher and outlined examples of both. We discovered how, throughout the centuries, military leaders sought ways to send and receive messages to their allies during times of war or conflict. Methods to send messages included using dogs, along with homing pigeons, telegraph, telephones, and radio.

Along with the advances in technology came the threat of someone intercepting the messages. As we moved into the digital age, scientist Claude Shannon helped shape the field of computing and cryptography. We learned how substitution and permutation could provide confusion and diffusion during encryption. We then learned how the Feistel cipher provides the template for most modern block ciphers. We saw how...