If you sell or buy anything on the internet it’s important to take precautions in order to protect you and your products from information theft, because it’s becoming easier and easier for people to illegally share digital products. Information theft is a type of computer security risk and it can be defined as stealing an individuals personal or confidential information. Information theft can cause as much damage, or arguably more than hardware or software theft.
Business and home computer users are both at risk of information theft. One example is a malicious individual stealing credit cards details so they can make unauthorized purchases on another person’s account. If this type of information is transmitted over a network there is a very high chance of it being intercepted. Every computer in the path of your data can see what you send. A lot of companies try to stop information from being stolen by implementing user identification and authentication controls. However, to protect information on the Internet and on networks, companies use a several encryption methods.
Encryption refers to the process of converting data into an unreadable form. One type of encryption software is Obfuscated code which is a programming language that is extremely hard to read. Encrypted data is like any other data because you can send it through a lot of options, but to read it you must decrypt or decipher it into a more readable form. Throughout the encryption process, the unencrypted data or input is known as plaintext and the encrypted data, or output is known as ciphertext. To encrypt information, the programmer converts the plaintext into ciphertext using some type of encryption key. An encryption key is the programmed formula that the person who receives the data uses to decrypt the ciphertext. There are a variety of encryption or algorithm methods. However, with an encryption key formula, you will be using more then one of these techniques. Some business use available software, while others develop their own. When an individual send information online such as via email for example, they cannot know who might intercept it, or to whom it could possibly be forwarded to. That’s why it’s not such a good idea to send confidential information in this way. However, an individual can help protect themselves by encrypting the information, or signing it digitally.
A digital signature is a type of encrypted code that a individual, website, or company pastes to an electronic document to make sure that the individual is who they claim to be. The code will most likely consist of the user name and a hash of usually part of the message. A hash is a type of mathematical formula that generates content from a specific message, so it is different from a message. The recipient will have to generate a new hash from the received message and compares it from the one with the digital signature to make sure that they match.
A lot of web browsers use 40 bit encryption - this is a very low level. Some browsers also offer 128 bit encryption which has a higher level of protection (the number of bits signifies the length of the encryption key - the longer the better). Organisations for who security is paramount (such as a bank for example) need a minimum of 128-bit encryption.
A website that successfully uses encryption methods to protect information is known as a secure site. A secure site uses digital certificate with security protocol. The two most popular security protocols are secure sockets layer (SSL), and secure HTTP.
A digital certificate is a notice that verifies that a user or a website is legitimate. A lot of ecommerce websites will usually have digital certificates. A certificate authority (CA) has the ability to issue and verify digital certificates. There are several websites that offer a digital certificate. Some popular ones are Verisign, Godaddy, Digicert and
Thawte. A digital certificate will usually contain information such as a username and serial number. This information is also encrypted.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provides encryption of every detail that passes between a server and a client. SSL also requires the client to have a digital certificate, so the web browser can communicate securely with the client. The web pages that use SSL will usually begin with https as opposed to http. SSL is available in 40 and 128-bit encryption.
Secured HTTP (S-HTTP) allows individuals to choose encryption for data that passes through a client and a server. When using S-HTTP, the client and the server must each have a digital certificate. This makes S-HTTP more difficult to use than SSL, but it is much more secure. Online banking applications typically use S-HTTP.
Increasingly, mobile laptop users can access networks through a VPN (virtual private network) The user will logon to a main office network using a standard Internet connection, then the VPN makes the connection secure. VPNs encrypt data as it passes from a laptop or any other mobile device so it won’t be intercepted.
