102 IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Versions 5.4 and 5.5 Technical Guide
9.1 Introduction to encryption
Encryption is the process of transforming plain text into an unintelligible format, also known
as
cipher text, so that anyone who does not have the encryption key cannot access the data.
Encryption is a critical technique for securing data, because even if an intruder gains physical
access, they cannot interpret any of the information. If you do not know how the data was
encrypted, it can range from hard to virtually impossible to decrypt the data.
Encryption can be implemented in hardware or software:
Hardware-based encryption
Hardware-based encryption is performed by special processors in certain types of
hardware (such as a tape drive, a network ...