Encryption—Never Leave Home Without It

[SOUND] We've developed a basic visual model for 0:00 Internet traffic to help us make informed decisions. 0:04 We've also toured some of the more common threats and effective defenses. 0:10 Now it's time to level up our own online behaviors to stay safe and secure. 0:14 One of the more important tools that we have available to us cryptography. 0:19 The movies can make it seem like cryptography is only used for 0:23 international espionage. 0:26 But the reality is that most of us use it nearly every day. 0:28 Without going into the details, this video will introduce encryption and 0:32 related tools that help make using it as easy as sending a text or an email. 0:35 Cryptography is a great tool because it offers a form of defense for 0:41 many of the attacks or threats we've already discussed. 0:44 And best of all, you're likely already using it. 0:47 In our last video, we talked about HTTPS. 0:50 This secure version of HTTP, the main communication of the Internet, 0:53 offers protections from eavesdropping and from man-in-the-middle attacks. 0:58 Cryptography, at least for 1:02 our purposes, is the use of advanced mathematics to serve this double purpose. 1:03 First, it provides guarantees of authenticity by 1:09 ensuring the participating parties are who they say they are. 1:12 This could be you and another person, or your computer and 1:16 a website hosted in another part of the world. 1:20 And second, it protects privacy by encrypting the contents of a message 1:22 in such a way that only the proven participants can decrypt and read it. 1:27 Often, this happens seamlessly, such as in the browser for HTTPS traffic. 1:32 Another seamless integration is Apple's iMessage, 1:37 the built-in text messaging between iOS devices. 1:40 These messages are also protected with strong cryptography without 1:43 complicated setup required from users. 1:47 Let's explore other ways to use cryptography to get these benefits for 1:50 the rest of our digital information. 1:53 We can categorize the digital information in our lives into data in transit and 1:56 data at rest. 2:00 This can help us tools the right tools for the job. 2:02 Data in transit relates to the active, communicating messages. 2:05 This could be sending an email or a text message, but 2:08 this could also include browsing a webpage. 2:11 The implied risk here is that the active transmission in vulnerable. 2:13 So what are our options? 2:18 Fortunately, quite a few. 2:20 Data in transit. 2:22 Web Traffic- https. 2:24 Look for it in the address bar, and that it shows the right domain. 2:26 Additional tools like HTTPS Everywhere 2:31 can help use only secure sites wherever possible. 2:34 Email, several options exist and more are in development. 2:37 Third party services provide encrypted emails such as ProtonMail or RiseUp. 2:41 Other solutions like Enigmal allow you to keep your existing e-mail address, and 2:46 can encrypt the content of your messages. 2:51 Text messages. 2:53 Two big players in the field at the moment, Signal and WhatsApp. 2:54 They're based on similar technologies so 2:58 their discerning features are more about design choices and supporting companies. 3:00 VPNs. 3:05 We spoke briefly about virtual private networks already 3:06 as a way to protect your internet traffic. 3:09 But it's worth repeating here. 3:11 Countless VPN services are available, so 3:13 it will take some research to find the best fit for you. 3:15 Data at rest relates to the act of storing information. 3:19 This could be everything on your hard drive, or an external drive, or 3:23 even how your email and text messages get saved on devices. 3:26 The risk here is a bit more obvious. 3:30 If someone gained access to these devices, what information could they capture? 3:33 There is no shortage of solutions for this category either, so let's jump right in. 3:37 Data at rest, system encryption. 3:42 Often, there's a simple setting to be switched on for a given device or 3:45 operating system, and 3:48 it's usually accompanied by providing a strong passphrase. 3:50 For example, on Window's machines it's called BitLocker. 3:53 And on Mac OS, it's FileVault. 3:56 It is highly recommended to enable this when possible on all your devices, 3:58 whether a desktop, laptop, cellphone or tablet. 4:03 Drive encryption, some built-in tools allow individual files and 4:07 folders to be protected with basic encryption. 4:10 Other third party tools have seen greater adoption. 4:13 Windows, Encrypted File Service. 4:16 macOS, Disk Utility. 4:18 VeraCrypt is a free, open source utility that improves upon another well-known, 4:21 but now abandoned, tool, TrueCrypt. 4:26 Third party tools. 4:29 Other tools offer different levels of protection with varying degrees of 4:30 usability and cost. 4:34 GPG is a tried-and-true command-line multi-tool that can cover just about any 4:35 need, if you can figure out how do you construct the correct command. 4:40 Keybase is an interesting service that offers various cryptographic 4:45 functionality, including encrypted chat and shared file-system. 4:48 Now we've seen how beneficial cryptography can be. 4:52 We've also explored ways that it has already improved our lives. 4:56 And, finally, we've learned about some additional tools to protect our data, 4:59 both in transit and at rest. 5:03 All this without needing to dig into the messy details of the mathematics 5:05