Data Security in the Modern Age: An Application and Implementation of Data Encryption and Decryption

The explosive growth of data in the Internet and digital age and the exponential demands for mobile devices, smart devices, wireless and wired sensors, social networks, personalized healthcare and other data-centric technologies has permeated through every facets of our personal, educational, professional, corporate and government lives. The ubiquity of data has resulted into an increasing number of data breaches and security vulnerabilities in data storage worldwide. Thus, there is a heightened effort globally to strengthen the security of data storage and data sharing to protect mankind against the malicious adversaries intending to tamper with the data, pose a threat to the freedom of information and individual and collective privacy.This study therefore focuses on the design and implementation of a data decryption and encryption algorithmic module using the field programmable gate array (FPGA) NEXYS 2 board and Xilinx Integrated Synthesis Environment (ISE) 14.6 development tool kit. The design is applicable in instances where two or more parties exchange private and confidential information by helping to eliminate the possibility of eavesdropping or attack from a malicious adversary.