Privacy techniques

Privacy techniques are measures an individual or organisation can take to improve the protection of their personal data. These techniques can range from adopting certain behaviours to technical measures. Some examples of privacy techniques in realm of behaviour are to; not store private data on public storage services, not use public Wifi networks for sending sensitive data and create strong passwords for accounts. Technical privacy techniques are, among other things: end-to-end encryption, webbrowsers blocking certain trackers, multi-factor authentication and biometric identity protection.  

Encryption is the process of disguising information as “ciphertext”, or as unintelligible data to an unauthorized person. Decryption is the opposite process of converting data back into its original, intelligible, format. Encryption is thus aimed at ensuring the confidentiality of data next to Identity & Access management. Encryption requires a ‘key’, generally known to the transmitter and recipient of the data to control the way in which the data is made unreadable and subsequently readable. Symmetric encryption requires the key to be the same for the transmitter and recipient. Asymmetric encryption has a pair of keys; one for encryption and one for decryption. Computers use algorithms to encrypt data. Official standards of encryption and accessory algorithms, approved by standardisation authorities, exist for both symmetric and asymmetric encryption. Encryption is an important part of all Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Examples of its use are the SSL/TLS protocols that provide secure access to websites (and show the ‘lock’ symbol in the URL bar of a web browser), e-mails, ‘end-to-end encryption’ messaging apps and digital signatures.   

Related Keywords: GDPR, security, safeguard, authentication, confidentiality, cryptography, security, privacy, encoding information, ciphering, pseudo-random encryption, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), digital certificate, HTTPS, homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, quantum encryption.