The Security Of Banks: Cryptosystems In The Banking Industry (Essay Sample)

Cryptosystems in the Banking Industry Student’s Name Institution I. Introduction A. The world over financial transactions has been marred by a lot of security issues, that is, the banking indusrues have been exposed to attackers. This has necessitated strategies to enure the security of the finds and the information of the customers. To guarantee such security in banking industries, crytptograpgy has been employed on large scale. This technique ensure security of money and concerned bank exchanges considering also th Automated Teller Machines (ATM Cards), electronic businesses and the Personal Compueter Passwors. In cryptography, useful information is protected from unauthorized users. Cryptpgraphytechnique has benn used in the banking industry for a long time until now. It entirely makes use of the procrss of encryption where plaintext (ordinary information) is converted into cipher-text (incomprehessible garbage). On the hand, encrypted information can be reversed by a process known as decryption. In this process, information is converted from incomprehessible garbage bak to ordinaryform or th plain text. A cipher can be described in simple terms as a pair of algorithms which are useful in information encryption and its reverse is decryption. More detais regarding cipher action are controlled by both the key and the algorithm. Cryptography has numerous admired strategies that are functional in many fiscal institutions such as banks, they include; * public-key cryptography * symmetric-key cryptography * triple DES cryptography B. The Area of focus: Cryptosystems in Banking Industry the cryptography approach attemps to fulfill the objectives listed below by applying different techniques; * authentication: This is the process of proving the identity of someone. * Confidentiality or Privacy: The process of keeping the information for use by the target receiver only. * Integrety: The process of ensuring that the information reaches the receipient in its original state without any alteration. * Non-repudiation: It is a way of proving that the sender has indeed sent the message to the intended receiver. Cryptography approach is not only useful in data protection against modification, bue also useful in the authentication of the users. C. Thesis statement The banking industry has adapted different cryptosystems frameworks to ensure data security through different algorithms. D. The Definition of Key terms crypto-currency cryptography algorithms banking industry II. Background: A high premium is set on security when storing and transferring data with respect to customer financial records. * Historical Overview of use of cryptosystems in banking industry Until the first world war, cryptograpgy was a public field in the United States. Its importance was first realized by the Navy and Army to the national security where they started a secret use. The strategy was dominated by the government at the beginning of 1970 because it could afford computers and little information could be released. When the computers were made revolutionized and made readily available, the scientific and academic communities adopted them. During this period, encryption demand had raised as a result of basic changes in the American communication methods.The interests of various industries drove the increase in cryptography demand (for instance, the financial institutions needed electronic transactions that are secure and most businesses required trade secrets from their stored computers), and also personal interests for example secure wireless communications. Data encryption for the best qualification for digital communication. The cryptographic techniques use key as dicussesd above which are used to encode or decode a message. The encoded data is not prone to attackers and analogous combination used are safe. The length of the safety is represented by the length of the key usually measure in bits. The longer the key, the longer the time needed to code it. There are several risks associated with financial institutions. These risks require incorporation of secure strategies such as cryptography. Technologies are being developed at higher rates to curp this issue. There is a quick change of products and methodologies due to this security situation. absolute security is impossible, however, its levels of security should be attained which exist in conventional banking transactions. Cryptography is a good strategy for security. However, it has a lot of limitations which include the following; * Difficulty to understand: The idea of cryptocurrecies is new to most people. They could invest their money with little knowledge on it and may even lose their money. * Not widely accepted: Digital currencies are not accepted by most websites and companies. * Lack of knowledge: Most people do not have awareness on the use of cryptocurrncy hence they are prone to hackers. The technology used is difficult to most people and people need mindful information on its investment. Other limitations include the following: Lose of wallet Uncertainity No reverse mthods of payment Scallings III. Types of Cryptographic Algorithms Cryptographic algorithms have been classified in several ways. However, they will be classified according to the type of employed keys for informations encryption and decryption. This paper wll also defined the base on the funtion and application. Thre types of algorithms will be discussed. These include: * Public Key Cryptography (PKC) or Assymetric Key Cryptography Public-key cryptography refers to a secret communication system in which the two parties involved do not require first swap of secret keys. The method can also be used for creation of digital signatures. Public-key cryptography is basic and extensively used technology all over the globe. It allows information to be transmitted securely ovr the internet. It was first embraced for sensitive data transmission operations by banking institutions. Public-key cryptography has two primary branches namely; Public Key Encryption Didital signatures Public key encryption — a message encrypted with a recipient's public key cannot be decrypted by anyone except a possessor of the matching private key -- presumably, this will be the owner of that key and the person associated with the public key used. This is used for confidentiality. Digital signatures — a message signed with a sender's private key can be verified by anyone who has access to the sender's public key, thereby proving that the sender had access to the private key (and therefore is likely to be the person associated with the public key used), and the part of the message that has not been tampered with. * Symmetric Key Cryptography (SKC) Symmetric-key algorithms are a class of algorithms for cryptography that use trivially related, often identical, cryptographic keys for both decryption and encryption. In symmetric-key cryptography, the plain text is encrypted by mangling it with a secret key. Decryption requires knowledge of the same key, and decryption reverses the mangling. The encryption key is trivially related to the decryption key, in that they may be identical or there is a simple transform to go between the two keys. The keys, in practice, represent a shared secret between two or more parties that can be used to maintain a private information link. * Triple Data Encryption Standard (TDES). Feistel, Walter Tuchman, Don Coppersmith, Alan Konheim, Carl Meyer, Mike Matyas, Roy Adler, Edna Grossman, Bill Notz, Lynn Smith and Bryant Tuckerman (1974) proposed the Data Encryption Standard while working for IBM Research labs. This Data Encryption Standard is a method for encrypting information that is based on a Symmetric-key algorithm that uses a 56- bit key. DES is considered to be insecure for many applications. This is chiefly due to the 56-bit key size being too small. DES consequently came under intense academic scrutiny which motivated the modern understanding of block ciphers and their cryptanalysis. This led to the development of Triple DES. These algorithms are essentially symmetric encryption techniques only, only modified to support greater security concerns. Triple DES is a block cipher formed from the Data Encryption Standard (...