Data Confidentiality Methods and Usage

Lets have a brief look at data security terms, also it becomes interestingly necessary to understand the different between those terms such as, their objectives, algorithm and applications.

Once we have clear distinction then we know where to apply these data security provisions.
Encoding is the process of translating data between two formats according to a set of rules or a formula and can be reversed by employing the same algorithm i.e. no key is used.

Applications.

1. Encoding keeps your data safe since the files are not readable unless you have access to the algorithms that were used to encode it
2. removes redundancies from data, the size of your files will be a lot smaller, this results in faster input speed when data is saved.
3. Encoded data is easy to organize, even if the original data was mostly unstructured.

Examples: ascii, unicode, url encoding, base64

Encryption is a process of which transforms plain text into cipher text using an encryption algorithm and key

Application

1. end-to-end protection of data transmitted across networks.
2. Protect confidentiality of data.
3. Protecting Digital signature.
4. Secure email messaging.

Examples: aes, blowfish, rsa

Hashing is process of converting an input of text of any length into a fixed size unique string of text by mean of one way cryptographic hashing algorithm.

Applications

1. For validating the integrity of content by detecting modification to hash value.
2. Used to index and retrieve items in a database because it is faster to find the item using the shorter hashed key than to find it using the original value.
3. Password verification.
4. Digital signature verification
5. AV/IDS/IPS use hashes to detect malicious activity or content.

Examples: sha-3, md5 (now obsolete), etc.

Obfuscation is making something unreadable without changing the meaning and prevent successful reverse engineering and/or theft of a product’s functionality.

Applications

1. protect an application from reverse engineering.

Examples: javascript obfuscator, proguard

Tokenization is the process of substituting a sensitive data element with unique identification symbol referred to as a token, that has no extrinsic or exploitable meaning or value.

The token is a reference that maps back to the sensitive data through a tokenization system.

Difference between obfuscation and encryption.

Obfuscation: A process applied to information to intentionally make it difficult to reverse without knowing the algorithm that was applied.

Encryption: A process applied to information that, even knowing the algorithm applied, requires a secret (key) to reverse it in a reasonable amount of time.