AES-256 Encryption: The Strongest Encryption Standard

12/13/2022

With cybercrime continually increasing, security measures tighten for products that store and manage sensitive customer information. When looking closer, you’ll see many of them boast the term “AES-256 encryption” in the description. AES-256 encryption, simply put, is a symmetrical encryption standard that secures sensitive information by scrambling it completely. It’s now become standard practice to use AES-256 encryption to secure personal data because of how secure it is.

To scramble data, it divides the data into blocks, replaces different bytes, shifts rows, and mixes columns. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) refers to the encryption algorithm, while 256 refers to the key length size. It’s considered the gold standard in encryption because of how hard it is to crack. Even federal government entities like the National Security Agency (NSA) use AES-256 to encrypt sensitive government information.

How It’s Safer Than Alternatives

AES-256 encryption has a longer key length than other options, which makes it harder to crack. And possible key combinations only increase along with key size. To put this in perspective, a hacker would need to try out 2,256 different combinations of 78 digits to break through the encryption. So, with that in mind, it’s no surprise that it’s nearly impossible for successful brute attack attempts.

Examples of AES-256 in Use

With AES-256 being the strongest encryption standard, many devices, applications, and networks use it to encrypt data. In fact, many modern computers already have AES instructions built into them, specifically those that use Intel or AMD processors. Because the purpose of applications like password managers and VPNs is to store and manage sensitive data, most of them today use AES-256 encryption. Our password manager, Pass Wizard, included.

With cybersecurity becoming increasingly important, we can only expect that security standards will improve in the coming years. But, for now, AES-256 encryption is the strongest encryption standard out there. And it’s why so many devices, apps, and networks continue to use it to encrypt data.

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