8.6 Encryption
To counter the possibility of having files accessed directly through the operating system or having files stolen, data can be stored in the database in encrypted form. Only the DBMS can unscramble the data, so that anyone who obtains data by any other means will receive jumbled data. When authorized users access the information properly, the DBMS retrieves the data and decodes it automatically. Encryption should also be used whenever data is communicated to other sites, so that wiretappers will also receive scrambled data. Encryption requires a cipher system, which consists of the following components:
An encrypting algorithm, which takes the normal text (plaintext) as input, performs some operations on it, and produces the encrypted ...
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