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Why protect sensitive data ?
A lot of tools and projects exist to filter data

Today, with the highly increasing intelligence budgets and technology, hackers and intelligence services have tools which allow them to tap the Internet selectively for strategic, competitive and confidential information.

Some well known examples from the intelligence services include Echelon, Carnivore, Magic Lantern and Tias among others.

You will find a short description of each and some interesting links below:

These are only some of the publicly known projects, while a lot of others are kept secret.

Quite a lot of hacker tools are also available (they are not listed here for obvious reasons). But you can search google on "internet hacking tools" to get an idea on the variety of tools available.

Also, concerning the most commonly used (and favored by the US government) encryption algorithms, there is a lot of doubt on their robustness:

A better algorithm, known for the past 10 years, and still reputed for its robustness and security is IDEA™, the International Data Encryption Algorithm:

  • IDEA: It's description is public at the commercial entity MediaCrypt who is handling its patent.
  • Bruce Schneier, the reputed cryptoanalyst, stated in his book Applied Cryptography, in 1996 that "In my opinion, IDEA is the best and most secure block algorithm available to the public at this time" (his opinion has not changed since then).
  • Interestingly, IDEA is not only the most secure algorithm at this time, but also the fastest one. A comparative study of MediaCrypt shows this.

Most encryption and VPN devices on the market do not provide an adequate level of protection, only using DES and triple-DES.

Lightning uses state of the art technology, and gives the choice of the encryption algorithms to the user. The standard ones include IDEA, CAST, Blowfish, Twofish, AES, DES and 3DES to provide the needed level of transmission security for the user's (and his clients') sensitive and valuable data.

You may now wish to know more about

Why Lightning's firewalls and VPN gateways are recommended and used by banks and other security conscious customers

 

 
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