What is Encryption Software

It is amazing to me how much people know about computers when thinking about data protection, computer and network security. I think about the bad guys from the movie, Live Free or Die Hard. They essentially take over all the information in the US by hacking the most elaborate computer systems in the US. However, there are ways to keep your files safe from hackers. There are windows server security precautions you can take, like making your server password protection; this makes it harder for hackers to break in to your server.

Other than just making your server password protected there are other ways to protect the valuable information on your computer. There is also, encryption software like AES, twofish, and serpent rely on a single shared password or key to encrypt or decrypt data, and for this reason they are known as symmetric schemes. Encryption software is used to secure stored data. It can also be used to encrypt an entire volume or hard drive. There is also disk encryption which is hardware used to encrypt every bit of data that goes on a disk or disk volume.

Encryption is important because it prevents you form having any data loss. It also is important because it provides partial server security, which makes it harder for people to hack your server. It is very important for small businesses to have server security because they often have a single physical server that performs many different for their business like a web server, database server, and e-mail server. Although it is easier to compromise a single server and it can expose the entire business information to an individual with a malicious intent. I currently work for a small business and our day of work revolves around our server and if it was ever compromised we wouldn' be able to do any work for the rest of our day.

The first thing you should get it a firewall, this is a good start for beginning to protect your server. A firewall is a software or hardware that keeps problems from spreading throughout your network. To truly secure your server safety you need to put a firewall at all access points of your server. This is a good starting point to make your server safer. Another way to increase security is to make sure the web administrator only allows authorized personnel to network resources.

These administrators also need to keep all there equipment up to date, and set appropriate access rights. These security measures might be good enough to keep hackers away from your server; this is at least a good start to better network security.

One last way to make your server more secure is to change the point of access for your servers. This will make your IP address harder to access, and should make your server more secure. It is very important for businesses to have secure severs because there is a lot of very private and important information on your server.

So are you skeptical about having your companies data become encrypted? Well in today's day and age all it takes is an employee armed with a 5 GB USB flash drive to come steal your most precious data. And your unsecured, unencrypted network invites a hacker to get into a server or workstation holding sensitive data. But you don't have to be defenseless. There are plenty of options available today for securing/encrypting your data and many of these options are just ignored. As we see from time to time there are often data breaches from different companies and your data is stolen. Could this have been eluded? Of course! If the data had been encrypted, there wouldn't have been a breach in the system. We must start encrypting are data from enterprise to workstations in order for people to feel safe and have trust in a company.

Remember that Encrypting your data does not have to cost your company tons of money. It should have complete encryption at the enterprise level down to the individual's workstation. I believe encryption is as important as a firewall. You wouldn't leave your network unprotected by a firewall -- we all know that's as silly as just giving a hacker your enterprise or domain admin password. Nor should you leave your sensitive data unencrypted; encryption guarantees that your data is protected.

So how can Encrypting your data benefit you? Well think of it this way, when you send an email of sensitive data, encryption provide you with security so no unwanted parties can have access to your data. If your password is encrypted, it cannot be duplicated by anyone else so it eventually verifies your identity when you sign on using a smart card or an RSA device. When you sign an email with an encrypted signature, the email cannot be changed or modified without changing the digital signature. Using digital signatures provides you with proof that a document has not been compromised.

Create and enforce an encryption policy. Encryption can be used for email exchange as well as to encrypt documents on your hard drive. Encryption is used when logging onto a system, SSL connections on the web, and on anything that is sensitive within your business model (Source: WinMagic). Just as you have a disaster recovery plan, you should also create an encryption plan for your organization. Make it corporate policy to digitally sign every email. Configure encryption over your remote connections. Use encryption technology to encrypt the entire contents of your hard drive. Although not encrypting your data will not be the end of the world for your company, but it could cause your stock price to fall, profits to decline, loss of customers and customer faith in your company. So do yourself and your company a favor and get an encryption plan for your company a.s.a.p.