What Lawyers Need To Know About Encryption

A recently released whitepaper from Avansic covers the basics about encryption: what it is, how it works, the regulations that address it (HIPAA, for example, for some kinds of information), and what kinds of choices need to be made when adopting it. The most pressing area to encrypt is email, because it’s unclear who might have access to it along its route from sender to intended recipient. Why doesn’t everyone use encryption all the time? The paper explains the tradeoffs. It also describes a dark side of encryption: how it has become a hacker’s tool, with key information being held for ransom.