Skip to Main Content

data security and encryption 101

resource guide for Spring 2017 Tech Workshop: data security and encryption 101

email encryption

Encrypt any message you wouldn’t feel comfortable sending on a post card.

(the CryptoParty handbook, Version: 2013-08-21)

From riseup.net: What is encrypted email?

Encrypted email is a way of keeping the content of your email safe from eavesdropping as it bounces around the internet. The most common type of encryption is OpenPGP (OpenPGP is the specification, PGP is “Pretty Good Privacy” and is proprietary, GPG is GNU Privacy Guard and is free software). There are many resources on the internet that can offer you a detailed explanation of how encryption works. For our purposes, there are three components that are useful to understand: public key, private key and passphrase.

Your public key is, as you can tell from the name, publicly available. Sometimes, people use keyservers to share public keys to make sending emails using encryption easier. Whenever you wish to send encrypted email, you must have the recipient’s public key. Similarly, whenever someone else wants to send you encrypted email, they must have your public key.

A private key is connected to exactly one public key. Without a private key, the content of an encrypted message is extremely difficult to extract. In the age of supercomputers, nothing is impossible, but decrypting a message without the private key is extraordinarily difficult. Your private key is extremely important and should be kept in a safe place at all times.

Your passphrase should be at least 21 characters in length, should contain UPPER and lower case characters, as well as symbols (&$"{@). Your passphrase unlocks your private key and permits it to be used, in conjunction with your public key, to send and receive encrypted email.

encrypting files

a possible alternative to encrypting email is to encrypt individual files to send through unsecured email. if you do this- do not send the key to unlock files in the same email (unless it is in a very clever code).

for microsoft word, excel, and powerpoint files, simply find: Files>Info>Protect Document, then select Encrypt with Password

see adobe's Securing PDFs with passwords

passwords