Anthony Dick

Dropbox04
7/30/2021
Information Systems Security
CCIS 391 ADE

Find a recent article (within two years of this date) that discusses an encryption tool or
compares encryption tools. Provide a brief summary of the article and close out by making a
case for using the tool.

I put my article link in the sources, but I did not refer to it in the body of my text. For
reference, here is the article I am reviewing: https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-encryption-
software/

This article is from zdnet.com and it compares several encryption softwares. It doesn’t dive
into the extreme details of how the encryption works or how secure the encryption is built.
However, this article is a good starting point to see what kind of options you have on different
computing platforms. For example, the article refers to apple, windows, and mobile
separately and that shows some of the best encryption you can get on each platform.
The article begins by affirming something we all know in network security, “data breaches are
commonplace”. This shows a motive for the article, to find some software that can help in the
case of a data breach. Encryption helps keep data secure even when a breach occurs.
Sometimes you can have you data completely stolen, but if the encryption is good enough it
can still be protected.
The article refers to the different solutions available for home, SMBs, and enterprise users to
protect their data. Business systems of Microsoft OS have BitLocker. BitLocker is a great
tool that provides AES 128 or AES 256-bit encryption natively on Microsoft’s systems. This
is a popular tool that can protect a whole computer even if the computer falls into the wrong
hands.
IBM Guardium is more for virtual systems. It is an encryption solution that encrypts
solutions on the fly and works with VMWare. IBM is highlighting that some customers see a
ROI on this solution of up to 343%.
Apple FileVault is for Macintosh users to store their files in an onboard solution. The article
refers to this solution as more of a home-based not a business-based solution.
I’ll skip over some of the small and less interesting solutions, but Boxcryptor is an interesting
solution to encrypt cloud data. This is extremely useful for people and businesses because of
how much data we are now sending to cloud solutions such as Dropbox, Google Drive,
OneDrive, etc.
TokenEx is an encryption solution that specializes in financial data protection. It considers
PII and other data metrics as “tokens” and this allows the data to be encrypted with batch
processing of customer data.
Anthony Dick
Dropbox04
7/30/2021
Information Systems Security
CCIS 391 ADE

Each solution is great for the platform or use case it is built for. I would consider each piece
of software a great solution for the user it was specifically built for. Data needs to be
protected from bad actors.

Sources:

Osborne, C. (2021). Best encryption software 2021: Protect your data | ZDNet. Retrieved 31 July
2021, from https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-encryption-software/

Whitman M. E., & Mattord H. J. (2017). Principles of Information Security. [Columbia

College]. Retrieved from https://ccis.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781337470407/