Good Case Study On Principles Of Information System Security

Research is one of the most delicate things that take place around the world and each and every research institution goes to great extents to ensure that the research they are doing is confidential to them until the time they decide to reveal their findings to the public in general. As a result, institutions that involve themselves in research ought to find the most efficient and most secure method of protecting their information to prevent it from leaking to their rivals, as well as the public. The use of encryptions has been identified to be one of the most effective ways of protecting information and it is necessary to ensure that there are no loopholes or back doors so as to prevent information from being stolen. Encryption of data involves the translation of data into a secret code and for one to read the data they must have the password or key that would enable them to decrypt the file. Data that has not been encrypted is denoted as plain text and after encryption it is referred to as cipher text. As such, this makes information accessible to only those who are authorized to view the information since they are the only ones who would be having the password to decrypt the encrypted information. This paper would look at the main encryption methods and determine the best method to be used by ABC Institute of Research.
There are two main methods of encrypting information which include symmetric and asymmetric . Symmetric encryption employs the technique of using identical keys for both the encryption, as well as decryption of information. The symmetric key algorithms are seen to be faster computationally when compared to the asymmetric algorithms due to the fact that the encryption process is less complicated. On the other hand, asymmetric encryption is based on the use of two keys that are related, that is the public key and the private key. These two keys are used for the encryption as well as the decryption of information of data and as such they remove the security risk of key sharing. The private key is never given out. Information that has been encoded using the public key may only be decrypted when there is the application of the same algorithm as well as using the matching private key . In the same way, a message that has been encrypted via the use of the private key may only be decrypted by using the matching public key.
Looking at ABC Institute of research, the best way, that they can protect information that they share with XYZ Inc, is via the use of asymmetric encryption. This is so since it is a much secure encryption method as it involves two keys that the public key and the private key. ABC can hold onto the private key and issue the public key to XYZ and as such they would be able to decrypt information as they are the ones having the private key and this would ensure that the information is completely secured for the organizational use only. This type of encryption is advantageous because it eliminates the problem of secure key distribution. In addition to this, it also solves the scalability problem that is often associated with symmetric encryption. The only drawback of this method of encryption is that it is slower than symmetric type of encryption.

References

Kartalopoulos, S. V. (2009). Security of Information and Communication Networks. London: Blackwell Publishers.
Ronald L. Krutz, ‎. C. (2007 ). Wiley Pathways Network Security Fundamentals. New York: John Wiley and Sons.