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

Realizing the need for asymmetric encryption

We use symmetric encryption to secure our data transactions using a single shared secret key. When using symmetric encryption, it's best practice to change the key often to prevent it from being compromised. As a result, we need to generate and distribute the secret key securely to both parties when needed.

Because symmetric encryption uses a shared secret key, the question remains: how do both parties securely obtain the same key? The answer is to use a hybrid system that employs both symmetric and asymmetric encryption.

The components for asymmetric encryption, such as plaintext, ciphertext, and the encryption algorithm are similar to those used in symmetric encryption. However, instead of using the same shared key, asymmetric encryption uses two keys, a public and a private key, as shown in the following diagram:

Figure 5.1 – Asymmetric key pair

Figure 5.1 – Asymmetric key pair

The two keys are mathematically related...