Posted: August 1st, 2022

Cryptography and Network security

Cryptography and Network security
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Abstract
The emergence of the World Wide Web, ecommerce and social networks has led to modern organizations generating large volumes of data daily. As such, data security is a crucial aspect in ensuring that organizations can transmit information safely across the internet. Moreover, network security issues are also becoming of great concern to the world in this era of digital information. With more users being attracted to the use of the internet, cyber criminals are taking advantage of this factor to steal crucial information and data from internet users (Stallings, 2019). In this case, network security plays the role of ensuring that users of a given network are protected from potential cyber attacks with cryptography being one of the techniques used to write secret codes for transmitting information across the network. This paper has discussed various aspects of network security and Cryptography as they are used in various networking applications.

Introduction
As the internet becomes more widespread every day, the issue of network security is also becoming a more topical issue. Today it is very essay for unauthorized individual to gain access to a given network and spy on the data flowing through it with the potential of stealing this data or tampering with it to cause serious damage to its owners (Stallings, 2019). As such Network Security and Cryptography play the role of protecting networks and ensuring that data transmission through wireless networks is secure. With the level of cyber security threats advancing every day, network security systems are designed in such a way that they rely on the presence of protection layers with multiple components that ranging from security software and hardware, network monitoring systems, among others (Kahate, 2013). All these components are supposed to work in spot of each other in order to enhance the overall network security. The objective of this paper is to review the different cryptographic and network security approaches.
Common Types of Security Attacks
Network security attacks can be grouped into two main categories namely passive and active attacks. In passive types of attacks, attackers observe or monitor the flow of information and data through a network without doing anything (Hodgson, 2019). The intention is to maximum n the time they are monitoring the network so as to understand its secrets and steal any relevant data flowing through it. Among the common types of passive attacks are the traffic analysis where the traffic of the message passing through a given network is sent normally without the sending and receiving parties noticing that it has been read by a third party during the transmission process (Hodgson, 2019).
In active attacks, the attackers try to interfere or modify the network with the intentions affecting its operations (Hodgson, 2019). For instance, attacker may be interested with creating a false data stream so that there is delay on the network and a vulnerability that can be exploited occurs. Among the common types of active attacks includes the modification of message attacks where attackers try to modify the data or message flowing through a given network (Hodgson, 2019). Other form of active attacks includes the denial of service attack where attackers try to prevent data messages within a given network from reaching their destination.
Network Security and Cryptography
A network security framework is made up of the policies and provisions that its administrator has adopted to monitor and prevent any unauthorized access or modification of the network. Today there are private networks often used by individuals or companies and public networks that are open for access by the general public and their security requirements and maintenance also differ (Serrato, 2012). Just as it name suggests, network security is supposed to ensure that a given network is well secured from unauthorized intrusions.
On the other hand, Cryptography can be described as the science behind the writing of secret codes to conceal the content of the data flowing through a given network (Forutan & Fischer, 2015). In other words, Cryptography involves constructing and analyzing different protocols which block potential attackers and promotes different aspects of data security such as authentication and data integrity (Forutan & Fischer, 2015). For instance, the common aspects of cryptography involves data encryption and decryption which basically involves encoding data as it passing through a network and decoding I when t reaches its targeted destination. Today Cryptography technology is being applied in different filed such as with ATM cards, e-commerce and formulation of strong computer passwords (Forutan & Fischer, 2015). Having Cryptography and network security in place ensures that individuals and organizations can protect their data against various types of security attacks when this data is flowing through a given network.
Using Cryptography and network security individuals and organizations can protect the data flowing through the networks from potential cyber attacks. For instance, through Cryptography techniques like encryption, encrypted messages that have very strong secure passwords can be used to enhance the security of information flowing through a given network (Forutan & Fischer, 2015). Moreover, network managers are able to maintain confidentiality of the network by preventing unauthorized users from accessing it using various cryptography and network security methods.
Conclusion
From the foregoing, explosive internet growth has made data and network security an inevitable concern to any individual or organization whose network has a connection to the internet. From this discussion, we have understand the common types of network security attacks, both passive and active and how network security and cryptography can be used to enhance security and guard against such types of attacks. In future, work should be done to enhance network security management and optimal cryptography algorithm with the intention of enhancing data security of the networks and the cloud.

References
Forutan, V., & Fischer, R. F. (2015). Security-enhanced network coding through public-key cryptography. 2015 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS). doi: 10.1109/cns.2015.7346901
Hodgson, R. (2019). Solving the security challenges of IoT with public key cryptography. Network Security, 2019(1), 17–19. doi: 10.1016/s1353-4858(19)30011-x
Kahate, A. (2013). Cryptography and network security. New Delhi: McGraw Hill Education.
Serrato, C. (2012). Identity assurance and network security. Network Security, 2012(4), 19–20. doi: 10.1016/s1353-4858(12)70028-4
Stallings, W. (2019). Cryptography and network security: principles and practice. Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

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