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System encryption hides information on a computer using complex algorithms. Public and private key systems prevent interception by hackers. Windows has customizable encryption settings, including “FIPS compliant” for federal agencies.
System encryption is the practice of using encryption to hide information on a computer. The level of sophistication of such encryption has increased over time, but still varies widely. Phrase system encryption is used by Microsoft in some editions of Windows for a setting that can set a computer’s security levels to meet official standards for government computers.
Early forms of encryption, long before computers, simply involved replacing individual letters with code letters in a consistent pattern. Other systems involved the use of code words to replace particular commands or information. These had the advantage that they worked simply and were easy to use if the recipient knew the code system used, but they were difficult for unauthorized readers to crack.
Such systems, however, are not adapted to computer technology. This is because cracking the encryption system, also known as an algorithm or cipher, is a lengthy but not complicated process. For example, if a system replaces each letter with another of the alphabet, it can be solved simply by trying every possibility until both the system and the encrypted message are found. This would take too much time for most humans, but it’s a task a computer could do very quickly.
Modern system cryptography works largely along similar lines, but uses much more complicated algorithms. This greatly increases the time it takes for even a computer to crack the algorithm. One problem that remains is that rapid improvements in computational power and speed mean that algorithms that once seemed so complex they could never be beaten end up becoming obsolete. Some algorithms have even been hacked by a bank of game consoles.
Perhaps the most significant development in system cryptography is the development of public and private key systems. Previously, someone encrypting information would have had to provide the encryption algorithm, or “key,” to the intended recipient. If this were intercepted by a hacker along with the information, they would find it much easier to decipher the data.
The modern system requires the recipient to create the algorithms, not the sender. The recipient creates a public key that tells how the data should be encrypted and an associated private key that tells how to decrypt that particular encryption. They provide the public key to the sender, who then encrypts the data as required. At this point, only the recipient is able to decrypt the data.
Windows XP and its successors include customizable settings for system encryption. The most notable is “FIPS compliant”. This stands for Federal Information Processing Standard, a set of rules that must be followed on computer systems used by federal agencies. The rules require that individual encryption algorithms be approved for use under the standard.
