Use of Cryptography in data security over a network and Role and versatility of Hash function

Use of  Cryptography in data security over a network  and Role and versatility of Hash function

Abstract:

The increased use of computer & communication systems by industry has increased the theft of  proprietary information. Although these threats may require a variety of counter measures, encryption is a primary method protecting valuable electronic information. Cryptography is probably the most important aspect of communication and network security.
Today's cryptography is more than encryption and decryption. Authentication is as fundamentally a part of our lives as privacy. We use authentication throughout our everyday lives - when we sign our name to some document for instance - and, as we move to a world where our decisions and agreements are communicated electronically, we need to have electronic techniques for providing authentication.
Cryptography provides mechanisms for such procedures. A digital signature binds a document to the possessor of a particular key, while a digital timestamp  binds a document to its creation at a particular time. These cryptographic mechanisms can be used to control access to a shared disk drive, a high security installation, or a pay-per-view TV channel.
While modern cryptography is growing increasingly diverse, cryptography is fundamentally based on problems that are difficult to solve. A problem may be difficult because its solution requires some secret knowledge, such as decrypting an encrypted message or signing some digital document. The problem may also be hard because it is intrinsically difficult to complete, such as finding a message that produces a given hash value. As we can see that designing the hash functions such that the key generation and key management becomes more effective, efficient and dynamic. Day by day the problem of having secured transactions on network is becoming critical. It’s a challenging job to define more versatile hash functions in front of the designers. Our paper discusses the status-co and improvements in hash functions so as to make them more compatible in this world of threats and attacks.

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