Gwebs Cryptographer

Encryption is extremely important, but its overuse can also lead to problems.

Five to reasons to use Encryption:

1) You are dealing with important government, company, or personal data – especially on laptops, flash drives, or portable hard drives.

The news these days is riddled with stories of public servant or big company data theft, often due to laptop or hard drive loss. If big companies lose their data that often, little companies and individuals must do it all the time (more often, probably, because they don’t have encryption mandates) – they just don’t make the news. If you encrypt your data properly, data theft is virtually impossible. Note too that encryption doesn’t preclude data loss - you should back up your important data as well.

2) You are emailing important files or information.

You should always encrypt your email if it contains any important information, such as computer passwords, credit card numbers, banking or billing information, social security numbers, customer contact information, or anything else of value.

3) You are keeping your data on someone else’s computers.

Offsite backup is an important part of serious disaster prevention. You may be backing up your old college essays on a web server somewhere, or you may be storing a 200 gigabyte customer database in a datacenter… Whatever the case may be, if your data is on someone else’s computer, they can have access to it.

4) Your files and communications are personal and you don’t want others reading them.

System administrators and malicious teenagers can do anything with the mail that passes through their systems or over their networks. From building spam filters to sharing laughs as they peruse (and blog about) your love letters to MissyCat42@aol.com, OPE* is widely read.
*OPE: Other People’s Email

5) You don’t want the other people using your computer to see your data.

These days people keep their private and business information on computers more then ever, but that doesn’t stop them from letting visitors or family members use their machines. Just look at how much trouble that blog post got you into last week – and imagine if people saw the pictures…

Five good (and Not-So-Good) Reasons NOT to use Encryption:

1) You don’t care about a particular piece of information.

If it doesn’t matter to you if anyone reads a particular communication, there’s no need to encrypt it. For example, the message “Hi Alice, This is Bob! How are you today? ” has no sensitive information in it, so there is no reason to encrypt it.

2) You want your files to be searchable.

This is undoubtedly the most important reason not to use encryption. Once a file is encrypted, it becomes unsearchable. Of course, once you decrypt it you can find information inside… One solution maybe to encrypt things that you need searchable, and put unencrypted labels on them – for example, it is important to encrypt your customer database, but it is also important to keep it searchable – so you would ideally encrypt it, but give it a readable name, and then unencrypted it on the fly for searches.

3) You haven’t found a usable encryption product.
This is quite understandable – Encryption is a complicated subject and few products exist that make it simple and easy for everyday use. File encryption isn’t difficult, but finding the right software, and modifying your workflow and lifestyle to use it, is. Email encryption is even more difficult to implement because it requires both recipient and sender to use the same standards.
Luckily there are new programs on the market, like TrueCrypt for files, and WebmailSafety for email (disclosure: I work for GWEBS, the makers of Webmail Safety), that make it easy(er) to introduce even the most computer-phobic grandmother to encryption. I’m currently working on a tutorial for TrueCrypt.

4) You are communicating with people who aren’t savvy enough to use encryption, or with people you don’t know.

This is another reason people don’t encrypt their email, undoubtedly we have all encountered it. Getting certain people to use email is difficult in itself and using encryption adds a layer of complexity. WebmailSafety makes it easy to send invitations and begin using encrypted email, even for the most right-click impaired, if it’s any consolation.

5) You’re an exhibitionist.
You get pleasure from the thought of others reading your private data. Your personal letters being sent in plaintext excites you, your private photos, or better yet, corporate documents being exposed to the world gives you special sense of heightened awareness, elevates your heart beat and impassions your daydreams.

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