The Security Of Banks Cryptosystems In The Banking Industry - 275 Words

The Security Of Banks: Cryptosystems In The Banking Industry (Essay Sample) Content: 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. ïÆ'˜ï€  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 (...

Nuclear Energy For Tomorrow - Free Essay Example

I choose this topic because our planet is experiencing global warming and climate change at a rapid rate. Due to our consistent use and abuse of non renewable resources such as coal, natural gas, and oil. Although nuclear energy does create radioactive high level waste it is emission free and saves about 2.4 billion tons of carbon emissions. Our ecological footprint is 8.00 in global hectares per capita. The population of the United States is using twice the renewable natural resources and services that can be regenerated within its borders. When the amount of natural renewable resources dwindle and the demand is higher then production we will start to use more non renewable resources like coal which causes air pollution, and oil which can cause air pollution and marine pollution. The more we use non renewable resources the closer we bring our planet to destruction. Several studies have been carried out to determine the effect of nuclear power on the environment, especially in comparison with other energy sources. Many of them have established that nuclear power generation causes minimal effects on the environment as it emits very low amount of carbon dioxide and other green house gases (Sovacool 376). Energy sources such as fossil fuels cause more deadly pollution when compared to nuclear energy. Much of the opposition with nuclear power generation is associated with the potential catastrophic risks that can result from overheated fuels (Pandit, pp. 3). About 10,000 metric tons of high level radioactive wastes are produced from reactors around the world. There are controversies in regard to how these wastes should be deposited. Deep burial in stable geological locations was suggested, but no country has implemented that to date. New technologies have been developed to reprocess the waste and reduce its volume. However, this waste is too minute when compared to that from fossil fuels. Studies conducted to identify fatalities per unit power produced by the several leading energy sources have shown that nuclear power is the safest one while fossil fuels, especially coal, are the most polluting (Sovacool 376). This can be explained by the number of deaths that is caused by air pollution from fossil fuels. The director of Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School explains that the whole life cycle of energy production from fossil fuels leads to a trail of injuries, illness and death (Sovacool 376). It is estimated that fine particles that are emitted from coal electricity generating plants kill up to 13,000 every year in the United States. More deaths are also registered in the extraction and transportation of coal and other fossil fuels. In contrast, there have been no deaths associated with Nuclear power generation, apart from some notable accidents. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN estimate that the death toll due to cancer following the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl is yet to reach 9000 (Sovacool 376, pp.3). More research indicates that catastrophes associated with nuclear power plants are not major contributors of nuclear death or pollution. More than half of the deaths associated with nuclear power activities stem from Uranium mining. Even when this is included, overall number of deaths remains significantly low in comparison to all other energy sources.The production of nuclear power is relatively cheap when compared to coal and petroleum. The initial cost of setting up a nuclear power plant is usually very high. However, the subsequent fuel cost to run the plants is very low compared to other energy sources. The cost of power production from other sources may vary from place to place depending on deposits and other environmental factors. For instance, the use of coal for power production is economically attractive in countries such as the United States, China and Australia because they have abundant and accessible domestic sources (Sovacool 376). Gas is competitive for base load power in many locations around the world. However, the rising costs and environmental challenges have done away with most of these advantages. The cost of nuclear fuel for nuclear power generation is much lower compared to coal, oil and gas fired plants (Sovacool 376). However, the processing, enrichment and fabrication of the Uranium account for about 50% of the total cost. Additional costs are often associated with the management, radioactive used fuel and the ultimate disposal of the used fuel (Ojovan 12). However, even when these costs are factored in, the total price of energy production from nuclear power is much cheaper compared to the one got from gas and coal fired plants. A study carried out by the US Nuclear Energy Institute shows that a coal fired plant uses 78% of its financial resources on fuel, a gas fired plant needs up to 89% of its financial resources on fuel while a nuclear power plant requires only 14% of its financial resources on Uranium. Uranium has the advantage of being concentrated and thus can be transported cheaply when compared to gas and coal. It is also used in very small quantities to create similar amount of energy. In fact, one kilogram of Uranium can be yielded up to 20,000 times producing more energy than similar amount of coal does (Ojovan 15). Apart from the low cost of acquiring and transportation of Uranium, another economic advantage lies in the ability of a single nuclear power plant to generate high amount of energy. Nuclear power is much more efficient compared to other energy sources. Hydro power production may be hampered by adverse whether conditions and thus cause unprecedented increase in the cost of energy with serious economic consequences. Fossil fuel production and distribution are often affected by political situations in oil producing countries, and this regularly impacts on the gas prices. The greatest environmental advantage of nuclear power is that it does not release greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and chlorofluorocarbon) during nuclear reaction (Ojovan 37, pp. 4). Hydropower does not produce emissions such as fossil fuels, but it causes a significant effect on the environment through damming, change of water flow, lowering of water levels, building of power lines (Pandit, pp. 6). The environmental effects caused per unit power generation are enormous when compared to nuclear power generation. The greatest political advantage of using nuclear power is the fact that it leads to a significant reduction of dependence on oil. Oil is produced in very few countries around the world and thus has created a lot of interest and competition. This is indeed true for the political crisis that seems never to end in the Middle East. Nuclear fuel is cheaper and can be sourced from more stable regions of the world. Therefore, nuclear power can indeed free many countries from oil dependence (Sovacool 376). This paper sought to reaffirm that nuclear power provides cheap and clean energy. Its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages. Indeed, it has been identified that nuclear power is much cheaper, causes the least effect on environment and reduces dependence on other countries producing oil. Though it has some serious risks, the efforts that are currently in place have reduced them considerably.