The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a symmetric key encryption standard used to protect sensitive data. It was adopted in 2002 by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), and is recognized as an international standard for secure data encryption.
AES encryption is a block cipher that uses 128-bit, 192-bit, or 256-bit blocks for encryption and decryption. It is a commonly used algorithm for encrypting data for confidential storage and transmission over computer networks and the Internet. AES uses secret keys of 56, 128, 192 or 256-bit long, which can be derived from passwords or randomly generated. AES supports three key sizes, meaning that a 256-bit key can be used for encryption, which in turn can increase security and strength.
The advantage of AES is that it is a reliable and secure encryption standard, and is used by national and international organizations and in banking, financial, and military applications. AES algorithm has been mainly adopted by the industry as an ideal encryption system due to its symmetric key structure, which means the same key is used for both the encryption and decryption processes. As each key is unique, it reduces the probability of data being vulnerable to illegal access.
At the same time, AES is also easy to use and straightforward to implement. It is fast and lightweight, and works well with both hardware and software-based systems. For example, it’s commonly used in wireless protocols like WPA, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, as well as secure file transfer protocols.
In a nutshell, AES is currently the most popular and effective encryption method used to protect sensitive data. It is reliable, easy to use, and found in countless applications worldwide.
