Let’s first understand what is data? Data is nothing more than information. All the information in a computer is known as data. Data is a plural form of the Latin word “Datum”. In the computer, what we write is known as data. There are two types of data, the first is character or numeric data, and the second is known as binary. The first is readable by humans easily. The second helps computers run. They are readable by computer programs.
What is data protection: Generally, the word protection means the security that is given to something. For example, a house protects us from getting wet, when it rains, etc. In computers, the word protection refers to protecting the data of others, so that others cannot obtain the information. In computers, information is stored on hard drives, floppy disks, CD-ROM drives, etc. that is, any secondary storage devices, permanently. We need to protect it from being accessed, modified or deleted. There are two categories of data; They are private and public. Private data includes your name, password, address, phone number, etc. Public data is made available to the public, information about some specific fields, including science, technology, mathematics, etc. Not all the information in these fields is not public data. They may also have private data. It depends on how the data is organized to protect it from access.
Normally, we store information or data in the form of files, on secondary storage devices. The computer checks if the data is in protected mode. If it is true, then the computer will not provide data to the user. The information for each file is stored in the File Allocation Table (FAT), in the case of the Microsoft family of operating systems. The file allocation table is a table of rows and columns, each row corresponding to a file. The columns are, from, filename, address offsets from and to where the data will be read, various file attributes. One way, and maybe the only way to protect the file on FAT, FAT16, FAT32 is by hiding it and making it read-only. But that was not enough, since a user, knowing the existence of the file, can access it directly, without any difficulty. Later, Microsoft released NTFS (New Technology File System), which greatly increased security options.
With the advent of client-server technology, the computer system underwent revolutionary changes. NTFS introduced a concept called file and folder level security, where you can set options, with usernames and passwords. The user with sufficient permissions can access the file. However, there are several other problems. Username and passwords must be secured. So, they introduced a concept, called encryption and decryption. The basic idea of encryption is to convert data from one form to another. For example, suppose the letter ‘A’ can be converted to ‘Z’ after encryption. Decryption is the opposite of encryption. i.e. ‘Z’ should be converted to ‘A’, after reversing, i.e. decrypting.
Encryption and decryption involves several complex mathematical formulas. One needs to be good at math, to write programs, to encrypt and decrypt. To this day, no one knows the actual process except the author of the program. However, several smart guesses can result in the encryption code being broken. So, various encryption and decryption algorithms emerged, making guesswork difficult. Research on the best encryption and decryption process is already underway.
The second security measure, in addition to encryption, is the firewall. A firewall is a program that monitors traffic. Traffic is nothing more than a group of files. It can be a network file or an ordinary file. A firewall prevents certain files or data from entering the system. Check data or properties of the file and allow or block the file, depending on the condition set. Let’s say, for example, suppose, if one can prevent the abc.txt file from entering the system. Likewise, we can block or allow messages or files that want to enter our computer.
The growth of technology has translated into bringing high-level security to the computer system. However, it is necessary to build a more advanced data security system, which will prevent unauthorized access to the system for years to come.
