Data Integrity and Privacy form the building blocks of cybersecurity. These three core techniques- encryption, hashing, and salting, are considered to be the most important ones when it comes to the security of digital data. This is done to protect data during the process of storage and transmission, but they altogether play different roles and use a wide variety of mechanisms to achieve this.

What is Encryption?

Data are secured by converting them into a format that cannot be read without the secret key required for unscrambling them to the original form. Encryption’s primary purpose is to keep data from unauthorized access. It changes readable data into ciphered information that can only be understood by those who know the key.

What is Hashing?

It transforms the data into a fixed size of string characters, usually being a digest (representing the original string). This method is one-way, therefore, the original data cannot be extracted from the product. whenever hashing does work in such a way that whenever there is an attempt to tamper (alter) data then that hashing produces a different result and this different result can easily become apparent in comparison with the original hash. In other words, this function maintains the exactness of the data.

What is Salting?

The process of salting involves the addition of a random string to existing data to counter dictionary and rainbow table attacks.

Realizing the distinctions among these approaches assists in using the proper technique for a particular situation and, consequently, improves the process of data security. Salting is significant for password correctness as a hashing process, salting incorporates another level of protection for the hashed data (e.g., passwords) by prepending an arbitrary string before the hashing process, making an object of effort for the attackers who may use rainbow tables since the attack methods will be ineffective.

Differences Between Encryption, Hashing and Salting