GIAC Foundational Cybersecurity Technologies 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

Encryption is fundamentally a process that converts data from its original form into a coded format, making it unreadable to unauthorized users. This transformation involves algorithms that scramble the data using a key, ensuring that only those with the proper decryption key can revert the data back to its original, readable state.

While securing emails is a specific application of encryption, it does not capture the broader definition of what encryption is. Similarly, compressing files and enhancing data transfer speed may involve different techniques and technologies that do not relate directly to encryption processes, which focus specifically on data security through encoding rather than altering file size or transfer protocols.