Overview of Encryption and Encryption Options

Encryption is the process of transforming data into an unintelligible form to prevent the unauthorized use of the data. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it. Unencrypted data is called plain text; encrypted data is called cipher text. A cipher is an encryption-decryption algorithm.

The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a cryptographic algorithm designed to encrypt and decrypt data using 8-byte blocks and a 64-bit key.

The Triple DES (DES3) is a variation of DES in which three 64-bit keys are used for a 192-bit key. DES3 works by first encrypting the plain text using the first 64-bits of the key. Then the cipher text is decrypted using the next part of the key. Finally the resulting cipher text is re-encrypted using the last part of the key.

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a replacement algorithm that is used by the United States government.

Two encryption modes are:

• Block Mode, a method of encryption in which the message is broken into blocks and the encryption occurs on each block as a unit. Since each block is at least 8 bytes large, block mode provides the ability for 64-bit arithmetic in the encryption algorithm.
• Stream Mode, a method of encryption in which each individual byte is encrypted. It is generally considered to be a weak form of encryption.

A blowfish is a block cipher that operates on 64-bit (8-byte) blocks of data. It uses a variable size key, but typically, 128-bit (16-byte) keys are considered to be good for strong encryption. Blowfish can be used in the same modes as DES.

The Dynamic Server options that you can use for encryption are shown in the table below.