Cryptography in Operating Systems

Most of our discussion to date has been about cryptography in transit—talking about how to protect data sent across the network. This is because it has often been assumed that the network is the most unsafe environment for private data. With increased use of laptops, third-party data centers, and hard drive backup storage, it has become clear that protecting data “in flight” should include protecting that data in storage on the operating system.

Over the years, this has seen a number of developments in encryption technologies, leading to the widespread deployment of cryptography within most enterprises.