The Advantages and Disadvantages of Asymmetric or Symmetric Keys

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Asymmetric key suits the scenario, as the ABC institute needs its information to be kept secret. If they were to use a symmetric key, the key must be kept secret by both the parties. As the information at ABC institute is very sensitive, if any one person from either party releases the key, the information can be decrypted. With asymmetric key encryption, they have their own private key for decryption; the information can be safe and not be read by others. Only the ABC institute knows the private key and will be able to decrypt the information. The main advantages of using asymmetric keys are the use of digital signatures, which enables the receiving end to verify the data came from a particular sender. Digital signatures also help to identify if the data has been tampered with in transit. The sender of any data also acknowledges the information came from them and can’t deny it by using a digital signature. Some of the disadvantages of using an asymmetric key are as follows. Encryption is slow when compared to the symmetric key and needs more processing power for the encryption and decryption, which can be impractical while sending large amounts of data. Keys have to be authenticated to verify that they belong to that user and if that key is compromised any data sent to or from them can be access. Although symmetric key encryption is much faster, it requires both parties to have the same key; if left unprotected it opens a security risk in the transfer of data. A widely accept solution to this problem uses a hybrid of both symmetric key and asymmetric keys in encrypting data. A symmetric key gets encoded using asymmetric encryption and then transmitted to the other party. This provides the most efficient encryption means by using symmetric keys, but it adds some of the key benefits of asymmetric encryption, as well as providing another layer of

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