IT Glossary
What is encryption?
Turning data into strings nobody can read without the right key — the mathematical padlock on your company's information.
A company laptop left on a train usually contains everything an opportunist would need: contracts, customer records, saved passwords. The difference between a minor incident and a notifiable breach comes down to one word — encryption, the mathematical transformation of data into strings that are meaningless to anyone without the key. It works in two places: in transit, which is the padlock in your browser making intercepted traffic worthless, and at rest, on laptop drives, phones and backups, which makes stolen devices useful to a thief only as hardware. The pleasant part is that the basic measures are free and already installed: BitLocker on Windows, FileVault on Mac, encryption by default on phones. They only need to be switched on and administered, which mostly means keeping recovery keys centrally rather than on a sticky note. The GDPR names encryption explicitly among recommended measures, and in practice, encrypted data that goes missing can spare a company from having to notify its customers publicly — a reputational difference that is hard to overstate. The short rule: everything that leaves the office, encrypted, no exceptions.
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Why it matters for your business
A lost device is not a breach
An encrypted laptop or phone is, to whoever finds it, just hardware — customer data stays locked and your legal obligations stay minimal.
Interception becomes pointless
Traffic over HTTPS and VPN is unreadable on the way, so customer passwords and payment details never travel across the internet in the clear.
An argument for regulators and clients
Documented encryption satisfies GDPR expectations, calms corporate client audits and reduces the penalty if an incident happens anyway.
Frequently asked questions
Does encryption slow our computers or our website down?
Not noticeably. Modern processors have dedicated instructions, and the cost of disk encryption or HTTPS is a few per cent, invisible in real work. The belief that encryption is slow belongs to a previous decade of hardware.
What happens if we lose the encryption key or password?
The data is permanently gone — that is precisely the mathematical guarantee you are buying. Which is why corporate encryption is administered: recovery keys are deposited centrally in a directory service, a device management platform or the company password vault, never solely in one person's memory.
Is end-to-end encryption different from ordinary encryption?
Yes. With end-to-end, only the sender and recipient can read the content — not even the service operator can. With ordinary encryption in transit, the provider sees the data on its own servers. For sensitive business communication, that difference is the whole point.
Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247