Difference Between Encryption, Encoding, and Hashing

Encryption

Encryption is an encoding technique in which a message is encoded by using an encryption algorithm in such a way that only authorized personnel can access the message or information. It is a special type of encoding that is used for transferring private data, for example sending a combination of username and password over the internet for email login. In encryption, data to be encrypted(called plain text) is transformed using an encryption algorithm like AES or RSA Encryption Algorithm using a secret key called a cipher. The encrypted data is called ciphertext, and finally, the secret key can be used by the intended recipient to convert it back to plain text....

Encoding

In the Encoding method, data is transformed from one form to another. The main aim of encoding is to transform data into a form that is readable by most of the systems or that can be used by any external process. It can’t be used for securing data, various publicly available algorithms are used for encoding. Encoding can be used for reducing the size of audio and video files. Each audio and video file format has a corresponding coder-decoder (codec) program that is used to code it into the appropriate format and then decodes it for playback....

Hashing

In Hashing, data is converted to the hash using some hashing function, which can be any number generated from a string or text. Various hashing algorithms are MD5 and SHA256. Data once hashed is non-reversible. The hash function can be any function that is used to map data of arbitrary size to data of fixed size. The data structure hash table is used for storing data....

Difference Between Encryption, Encoding, and Hashing

Encryption Encoding Hashing Encryption is a type of encoding technique where the message is encoded using an encryption algorithm so that only authorized persons can access that information. Encoding is a technique where the data is transformed from one form to another. Hashing is a technique where the data is converted to hash using different algorithms present there. Encryption is a technique used for protecting the confidentiality of the data. Encryption is used for preserving the usability of the data. Hashing is simply used for checking the integrity of the data. Appropriate Keys are used in the Encryption. No Keys are used in Encoding. No Keys are used in Hashing. Encryption can be reversed back to its original form by using appropriate keys. Encoding can be reversed back to its original form. The hashed one cannot be reversed back to its original form. Example: AES Algorithm, RSA Algorithm, Diffie Hellman Example: BASE64, UNICODE, ASCII, URL Encoding. Example: MD5, SHA256, SHA – 3....

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Base64 used for Encoding or Encryption?...