Encryption, protection, passwords – these all help us in keeping data safe whether we’re making an online transaction or sending a file. When we say encryption, it is keeping information secret by providing limited access or putting passwords. To encrypt a file these days doesn’t require supercomputers or spy kits, in fact adding a password is just as easy as 1,2,3…
History of encryption
If you would like to know where it all began, encryption can be found as early as the ancient Greek times where the term “encryption” was known as “kryptos” which literally means hidden secret. Back then, computers we’re non-existent so securing information required skills and techniques that need to be studied. Basically, kryptos, or later on known as cryptography is creating a secret message that the public cannot easily understand. As time went by, of course, cryptography also grew, developed and changed which in the 20th century began growing with the introduction of electronics. By now, we know this process as encryption and can publicly be added in any data file using two inventions in the 1970’s – Public-key cryptography and Data Encryption Standard.
Detailed developments in bullets
For more curious minds, here’s a detailed but bulleted version about encryption and how it came about.
1900 BC: In the old kingdom of Egypt, hieroglyphs were used and carved to the walls of their tombs
An Image from WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
800BC: Monoalphabetic substitution ciphers were used. The frequency analysis technique was made by the Arab mathematician, Al-Kindi to break the code.
700 BC: The Greeks used Skytale. This was the first cryptography using only a wooden stick! Spartans who send and receive information both have the same kind of rod where a strip of leather would be wrapped around it. This is where letters were written. The leather strip is then unwound and sent out without the stick so the message cannot be read while in transit.
