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

Comparing common hash algorithms

Similar to the choices we have when using encryption, there are several hash algorithms. Each one compresses the data a bit differently in order to create a message digest. In this section, we'll review some of the more common hash algorithms in use today and see why some are more secure than others.

First, we'll take a look at an early hash algorithm, the message digest algorithm, and then discuss SHA. Then we'll review some of the versions of SHA that are more acceptable hash algorithms used for cryptographic processes. Finally, we'll briefly discuss some of the permutation-based hash algorithms that are starting to gain traction, as an even more secure cryptographic option.

Let's start with one of the earliest cryptographic hashes, the message digest algorithm.

Using the message digest algorithm

Hashing a block of text produces a message digest. Ronald Rivest designed the aptly named message digest algorithm,...