Question

Write an essay of at least five hundred words discussing the use of encryption to protect data at rest, in motion, and in use.    

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Answer 1

Discussion about the use of encryption to protect data at rest, in motion, and in use:
Encryption should and even be mandated to be used to protect data at rest, in motion or transit, and in use. Encryption should be used at every level of a system. Both, hardware and software-based encryptions should be used for security purposes. Strong and secure encryption methods should be used for all data- at rest, in use, and motion.

Everyone should make cloud services as much as they can to leverage cloud's security services benefits to protect and secure all kinds of resources, systems, devices, machines, data, applications, etc, to particularly secure data at rest, in transit, and use. One should be it an individual or an organization should go for open source, well recognized, familiar, reliable, highly secure, and strong encryption methods to protect and secure their data. People should avoid any proprietary (of a particular organization's) encryption method or technique, them of promising people of providing the highest level and the strongest encryption method, boasting in about their encryption method and technology they are offering.

Encryption, in general, should be implemented and applied in all necessary devices, components, peripherals which, hold, transmit, and actually use data. Data at rest is encrypted in systems, does not mean the data is secure while it is being used and at least in transit. Especially when the data is in transit, there are tens and hundreds of factors, components, devices, processes, and other systems play roles of using the accessing, using, and transmitting the data through them, which begs for the question if all these other components, devices, systems, etc., are secured, have an appropriate and strong encryption techniques are implemented and used.

Encryption of data provides security and prevents security risks. Encryption is used to gain secure data, apps, software, and systems access through authentication and authorization mechanisms. Encryption is very important for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of data. In the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud, encryption of data at rest, in transit and use in services, resources, and systems, are offered to their customers for free.

Encryption of data at rest, in use, and transit is very much required in apps, software, hardware, network, mobile, and device security. Encryption gives optimum protection for data in use. Encryption is being recognized by one and all and is widely used for personal, professional, business, and at an enterprise level. Encryption has become the norm. It comes with different techniques. It comes with a simple to the most complex and complicated technique to encrypted all kinds of data.

The two problems with encryption are:
* If the actual owner or the user is unable to decrypt the data using the appropriate and correct key, passphrase, password, or any other authentication methods to use the key, he/she misses, loses the key, deletes or destroys the key, he/she would not be able to access his/her own data. Hence, there would be an availability issue with respect to security as the actual owner or the user would be locked out of his own system or data.
* There is a performance overhead, consumes a little time, effort, energy, and computing to decrypt or encrypt data every time it is being used, saved, stored, or transmitted.

As a professional and best practice, full memory and disk encryption should be implemented and used. There is even an option to apply encryption at the process segments level in the stack, code or heap, in which encryption can be applied on an individual basis or in composition. One should encrypt the entire hard drive or disk. Encryption protects from any data breach. One could use a third-party encryption product using open source cryptographic techniques and algorithms to secure data at rest. Encryption is a must to be used in databases (DBs) to protect data stored in it, transmitted from and to databases, and while the DBs are using the data. Encryption is important to store data, as data has value, as the data has personal, sensitive, confidential, important, and even financial value, and as data is money or an asset.