Choose a Session. Data Security. Jeff Petters. Pretty Good Privacy PGP is an encryption system used for both sending encrypted emails and encrypting sensitive files. Since its invention back in , PGP has become the de facto standard for email security.
The popularity of PGP is based on two factors. The first is that the system was originally available as freeware, and so spread rapidly among users who wanted an extra level of security for their email messages.
The second is that since PGP uses both symmetric encryption and public-key encryption, it allows users who have never met to send encrypted messages to each other without exchanging private encryption keys. If you want to improve the security of your email messages, PGP offers a relatively easy and cost-effective way to do this.
PGP shares some features with other encryption systems you may have heard of, like Kerberos encryption which is used to authenticate network users and SSL encryption which is used to secure websites. At a basic level, PGP encryption uses a combination of two forms of encryption: symmetric key encryption, and public-key encryption.
At the highest level, this is how PGP encryption works:. Well, the answer is pretty simple. Public key cryptography is much, much slower than symmetric encryption where both the sender and recipient have the same key. Using symmetric encryption requires, though, that a sender share the encryption key with the recipient in plain text, and this would be insecure.
So by encrypting the symmetric key using the asymmetric public-key system, PGP combines the efficiency of symmetric encryption with the security of public-key cryptography. In practice, sending a message encrypted with PGP is simpler than the above explanation makes it sound. You will see a padlock icon on the subject line of their emails. The email will look like this the email addresses have been blurred for privacy reasons :.
ProtonMail — like most email clients that offer PGP — hides all of the complexity of the encryption and decryption of the message. If you are communicating to users outside of ProtonMail, you need to send them your public key first.
And so, although the message was sent securely, the recipient does not have to worry about the complexities of how this was done. Of these three uses, the first — sending secure email — is by far the dominant application of PGP.
As in the example above, most people use PGP to send encrypted emails. In the early years of PGP, it was mainly used by activists, journalists, and other people who deal with sensitive information. The PGP system was originally designed, in fact, by a peace and political activist named Paul Zimmerman, who recently joined Startpage, one of the most popular private search engines. Today, the popularity of PGP has grown significantly.
PGP was developed by the American computer scientist Phil Zimmerman , who made it available for non-commercial use at no charge in To encrypt data, PGP generates a symmetric key to encrypt data which is protected by the asymmetric key. Asymmetric encryption uses two different keys for the encryption and decryption processes of sensitive information.
Both keys are derived from one another and created at the same time. This key pair is divided and referred to as a public key and a private key. Data is only encrypted with a public key, and thus, can only be decrypted with its matching private key. PGP is just as strong as that of AES, but it adds an additional layer of security to prevent anyone who only has the public key from being able to decrypt data. Another benefit of asymmetric encryption is that it allows for authentication.
After you have exchanged public keys with your trading partners, the private keys can be used to digitally sign the encrypted content, allowing the decryptor to verify the authenticity of the sender. PGP requires more computational resources, which is why it is usually not recommended for encrypting data in large databases where information needs to be accessed frequently, and each record that you access needs to be ran through a cryptographic process.
When you are considering which encryption to use for your sensitive information, choose whichever will suit your needs best:. An introduction to encryption, including best practices for IBM i encryption. Although these mission-critical systems once operated in relative isolation, today they generally serve as major Ransomware attacks have been prominent in the news lately, but for every such breach that is widely publicized, there are many others that go unreported in the press.
Our unique approach to DLP allows for quick deployment and on-demand scalability, while providing full data visibility and no-compromise protection. Learn about PGP encryption as well as the benefits of using it to secure your private messages in Data Protection , our series on the fundamentals of information security. PGP encryption or Pretty Good Privacy encryption, is a data encryption computer program that gives cryptographic privacy and authentication for online communication.
It is often used to encrypt and decrypt texts, emails, and files to increase the security of emails. PGP encryption uses a mix of data compression, hashing, and public-key cryptography. It also uses symmetric and asymmetric keys to encrypt data that is transferred across networks. It combines features of private and public key cryptography. Each step uses a different algorithm, and each public key is associated with a username and an email address.
When plaintext is encrypted with PGP, it first compresses the plaintext. Data compression saves transmission time, disk space, and reinforces cryptographic security. Most cryptanalysis methods exploit patterns that are found in the plaintext. However, the asymmetry of PGP encryption allows for authentication.
After public keys have been traded among partners, the private keys are used to digitally sign the encrypted content. This allows the decryptor to confirm the sender. One use of PGP encryption is to confidentially send messages. To do this, PGP combines private-key and public-key encryption.
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