# Cryptography overview

Cryptography is the practice and study of hiding information. The word cryptography origins from the Greek words kryptos (hidden, secret) and gráphõ (I write). Today huge amounts of sensitive information is stored and transmitted electronically, and the need to keep this information secure has resulted in several strong encryption standards.

## The Advanced Encryption Standard

One of these standards is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) developed by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen in cooperation with the US government. It consists of three block chipers, AES-128, AES-192 and AES-256, which utilize 128-, 192- and 256-bit keys. All three chipers are considered to be strong enough to withstand any brute-force attack possible with current technology.

## Encryption overhead and specialized hardware

Both the encryption and decryption process require heavy computations which can slow down secure communication and make secure storage media slow. One way of alleviating this is to employ powerful specialized hardware in the encryption and decryption process, of-loading the heavy computations from the CPU and reducing latency.