A debate that has been going on for quite some time, hash vs encryption. Which of the two is better?The reality is that both are focused to fulfill different purposes, it is not easy to answer the question of which of the two is better?But we will try to go into detail and explain the purpose of each.
Hashing vs encryption it is a battle that has been going on for quite some time in the world of technology. Both have security measures that have certain advantages and disadvantages, uses and capabilities, which creates a large gap between the two.
We could consider it as one-way and two-way roads. Let’s see, on a one-way street, we can move in that direction, unlike on a two-way street where we can move in opposite directions. If we go down a one-way street in the opposite direction, accidents are guaranteed.
We could say that the big difference between hashing and encryption is the address. In encryption it is possible to encrypt messages and decrypt it. However, in hashing, the message once encrypted cannot be decrypted. With this introduction, we can now move on to a slightly deeper comparison to understand the differences between the two.
Hashing vs encryption, the differences
Encryption is used to convert plaintext to ciphertext, mainly. Thanks to this, we can share information through a digital medium in a secure and confidential way.
Thanks to encryption, no unauthorized person, who does not have the decryption key, can access the data. Even people who have access to the key and can access the encrypted data have limited functionality in terms of how they can interact with it.
So, encryption is generally used on media files, text, etc. Information that is sent through the web, basically.
However, Hashing is different, the idea behind it is totally different. We use it to purchase the same dataset when needed so we can ensure it hasn’t been tampered with. Especially when we have a large volume of data, buying hash functions is much easier than buying each bit of data.
In addition to password storage and security, hashing functions are also used for digital signatures. Then we have the geometric hashing system that is used to identify and match similar graphs on a computer.
We can summarize it a little more, the idea behind hashing is to ensure the integrity of the data, while the purpose of encryption is to ensure the confidentiality of the data.
Unidirectional and bidirectional
Here we find another notable difference, hashing does not have a reverse process. Which means that every time a text is hashed, there is no way to go back to the original message. Although with hashing, there is no need to undo since it is used for another purpose.
It is not possible to reverse this, we would only use it to map the protected information. The encrypted information is secure if the hash code is proven to be original.
On the other hand, encryption if we can say that it can be undone. When we apply encryption to some information, we can reverse it without much trouble.
Which is safer?
In reality, answering this question is not exactly simple, since both are security standards with different uses and purposes. However, encryption is much more difficult to break than hashing. In order to crack the code, millions of years of continuous work would be required.
However, hashing can be made even more difficult to crack. Certain tools can be used to increase security, which add a random string of characters to the hash value. So, thanks to this, it will take more computational power to crack the code.
