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AES is a fast, efficient, and secure encryption standard. Certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), AES is used by the United States government to secure classified data.
What does AES stand for?
AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard and is a symmetric-key cipher. There are two fundamental kinds of cipher algorithms:
Asymmetric-key ciphers
These use public-key cryptography to allow the secure exchange of keys over a distance (such as over the internet). Data is encrypted using a public key, which is made widely available, but which can only be decrypted using the correct private key (which only the intended recipient should possess). Asymmetric-key ciphers require a high level of computational power. This makes them relatively slow, and thus most useful for encrypting small amounts of data. RSA, for example, is an asymmetric cipher used to encrypt just the keys during the TLS exchange that occurs when connecting to an HTTPS website.
Symmetric-key ciphers
The same key is used to both encrypt and decrypt the data. There may sometimes be a simple transformation between the two keys, but they are always derived from the same key. Symmetric-key ciphers require much less processing power than asymmetric-key ciphers and are therefore often cited as being around 1,000 times faster. This makes symmetric-key ciphers ideal for encrypting large volumes of data. Where large amounts of data need to be transmitted over a distance (such as over the internet), the data itself is encrypted using a symmetric-key cipher, such as AES, while the key exchange is secured using an asymmetric-key cipher, such as RSA.
