Cryptographic Solutions and its Significance in Cybersecurity

In today's era of fast-paced technological evolution, cybercriminals are capitalizing on these advancements to conduct sophisticated exploits. These cyber exploits have become a lucrative business on the dark web. As organizations increasingly operate and process data online through public and hybrid clouds, they become more susceptible to cyberattacks, including cryptographic attacks. Before delving into cryptographic attacks, it's important to first understand some key fundamentals.

What is Cryptography? 
Cryptography is a process of writing and solving codes to obscure the true meaning of data or a solution. Cryptography helps in protecting your data, and even if data is leaked, cryptography helps prevent the exposure of its identity or meaning. Cryptographic solutions are a critical component of cybersecurity and organizations must integrate these solutions into their software development processes to safeguard sensitive information.

Some common cryptographic solutions include:

• Encryption: This is the most commonly used solution in almost all parts of IT security. Encryption involves converting any plain text into a random stream of characters, known as Ciphertext. An algorithm called Cipher is used to perform the encryption or decryption process. Though these algorithms are open source, publicly known, and limited; it’s the private key that makes it secure. There algorithms are either Symmetric (same key is used for encryption and decryption) or Asymmetric (different keys are used for encryption and decryption).

• Hashing: This is one of the most important solutions used in network security. The Hashing function takes input and produces unique message digest as its output. Whenever there is a change in the input/file, the output changes randomly. Some popular hash functions are MD5, SHA family, RIPEMD and HMAC.

• Obfuscation: As the name suggests, these solutions focus on obscuring information to make it more confusing and difficult to understand.

  • Steganography is a popular technique where a true message is concealed/hidden within another message. The goal isn’t just to prevent unauthorized access to data but to prevent the arousal of any suspicion that there might be some hidden data at all.
  • Tokenization is a popular technique where sensitive data is protected by replacing it with a non-sensitive token. A prime example of this is how payment card information is not saved at the shops where it's used; instead, it is tokenized for enhanced security.

• Blockchain: Blockchain is a shared immutable ledger for recording transactions, tracking assets, and building trust. A ledger here indicates a record-keeping system that ensures that participants’ information is secure and anonymous. It is important to note that blockchain is not only an application for cryptocurrencies but it spans across industries. A good example of this is the usage of smart contracts in e-commerce software development. Blockchain ensures enhanced traceability and maintains a decentralized nature and security via immutable transactions.

Regardless of the industry a particular organization belongs to, having a standardized cryptographic solution, encryption methods, or algorithms, is a key step towards minimizing cryptographic attacks & setting up a strong security architecture.