Implications Flashcards
Social Impacts
Encryption socially impacts users by ensuring that information being sent over the internet is safe and cannot be accessed by others. This allows people to browse without the risk of their information being stolen/used by others. More people would be using online if they know that their data is encrypted and secure from people who may have malicious intentions. Without encryption, people may worry about their personal information being stolen. This means that instead of using documents online to write their information, they would prefer to use paper and pen to do it as it would be a safer option. Instead of doing research through websites, people would have to search for hours through books as it would be a safer method if encryptions aren’t available. However thanks to encryption, people can browse the internet safely to do research, communicate with family, and friends from around the world AND feel assured that their privacy is respected. For these reasons, encryption shows a huge social impact.
Sustainability Impact
The encryption methods that are used right now are secure and in order to try and crack even the weakest encryptions, it would take many years with our current computing power. Encryption is sustainable into the foreseeable future as it will still take a lot of time and resources in order to try and crack many of the encryption methods that are used today. This proves useful as people won’t have to worry about their data being accessed by others anytime soon. Right now, AES is a preferred method of encryption (for most of the communication done online) that would still take trillions of years to try and break without a key. For these reasons, encryption shows strong sustainability as it will require a lot of time and resources to be cracked.
Future-Proof
Future-Proofing is vital when it comes to encryption as improvement in technology is happening so rapidly. Just a decade ago, a hashing algorithm that was thought to be the most secure, was easily cracked. In a matter of time, algorithms could possibly be breached easily and so private information using these algorithms could be accessed by people. We need to keep on creating or improving algorithms so as to ensure people’s information is secure. With technology improving and getting cheaper to buy powerful computers, it will only be a matter of time before another algorithm that we use today could possibly be cracked. This is why futureproofing plays an important role in encryption as it ensures that encryption is being improved as technology is improved to ensure that people’s privacy is kept safe.
Ethical Issues
Encryption is used for protecting people’s privacy however, when it comes to illegal organisations/activities, people can hide thanks to encryption. This means that not even law enforcement can catch criminals as they aren’t able to view the encrypted messages/apps etc. Is this really good? As I understand that they respect the privacy of their users however when there is evidence for something highly important at stake; should they really keep their word? For this, there should be some kind of method for accessing encrypted data by the government or polices / FBI. However, this completely defeats the purpose of encryption as if the encryption can be breached effortlessly; what’s the point of the encryption?
Human Factors
Humans are known to make mistakes throughout history. We all have flaws and a lot of us depend on encryption to keep us safe online. However, when we use the same password for a large proportion of sites or when we use passwords that are easy to guess, it makes it easier for hackers to gain access. If someone else can gain access to an account, this means that the encryption is useless. People can prevent this by using different passwords for each site however this would be hard to remember which password is for which site. There is an autosave password however if your data is somehow erased, you’ll lose access to these and so you would have to go and reset the password for every site. Human factor is the reason why encryption isn’t exactly perfect. We all have flaws; can’t remember lots of different passwords so we use the same passwords for a lot of sites or we use easy to remember passwords which could possibly be easy to guess. These flaws of humans often destroy the purpose of encryption.
