Fed up on Encryption?
As we all know encryption is a hectic process. We have to maintain a key in both encrypting and decrypting and if we lost the key there’s no way to decrypt the ciphertext into plain text and also cost is high in encrypting. Therefore encryption is known as a bit of a chaotic work even though the security is high. Most of the time people tend to use this method only for critical information because of these drawbacks.
Data encryption translates data into another form, or code so that only people with access to a secret key or password can read it. Encrypted data is commonly referred to as ciphertext. All encryption algorithms are reversible
As we know there are two types of encryptions as Symmetric key encryption and asymmetric key encryption. I’m not gonna go into details about encryption algorithms in here. ☺
In real world, it’s not impossible to break the encryption key. By using a brute force attack, we can try all possible key combinations and break the encryption algorithm. It is the key size that makes breaking the encryption algorithm harder. Algorithms such as RSA, AES consider as more secure in contrast DES, 3DES are easy to break.
Disadvantages of encryption
What is data masking?
Fig [2] – Masking vs. Encryption
Data masking is a method of creating a structurally similar but inauthentic version of a particular data set. In here it’s not necessary to reconstruct original data from any intermediate data. When it comes to encryption, being reversible is a must but in data masking reversible is hard (not possible). If a masking algorithm is reversible then it considers as a weak algorithm. From the data security point of view, the best masking solution is random generation since it is independent of original data.
Some erroneously identify both encryption and data masking is the same. Data masking and encryption are two precisely different processes though both of them designed to ensure data protection.
When comparing to encryption masking is an easy process. It does not encrypt data. We can see data in its’ local format. It just replaced some information only. Even though the best ciphers can be cracked someday masked data cannot be unmasked. That makes it totally ineffective for the attacker and totally safe for the consumer.
Conclusion
- If the data is critical and important we can use encryption.
- If it’s about production data in a test environment, where the genuine data is worthless then its better go with masking.
- However, efficiency wise Masking Wins.
https://blogs.informatica.com/2015/10/05/data-masking-and-encryption-are-different/#fbid=MYsXd_IWKmM
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