Discussion and assignment

Discussion:

 In your own words, explain what the following terms mean to you as they apply to information security and safe computing: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Why are these factors so important to businesses? 

Assignment:

• 2.1 What are the essential ingredients of a symmetric cipher?
• 2.2 What are the two basic functions used in encryption algorithms?
• 2.3 How many keys are required for two people to communicate via a symmetric cipher?
• 2.4 What is the difference between a block cipher and a stream cipher?
• 2.5 What are the two general approaches to attacking a cipher?
• 2.6 Why do some block cipher modes of operation only use encryption while others use both encryption and decryption?
• 2.7 What is triple encryption?
• 2.8 Why is the middle portion of 3DES a decryption rather than an encryption?