A survey on symmetric text encryption techniques

Twenty-first century is the era of globalization and digitization. Nowadays, internet rules every aspect of life. Today, human life and activities are not limited to a society or locality. By means of social networking and service oriented architecture each and every emotion and action is computerized. Therefore, data security and privacy preservation need ultimate priority and attention. Cryptography is the part of computer science which deals with information security. Diverse cryptographic methodologies are available for different media. Ensuring and enhancing security of text data is of utmost importance, as, majority of online communication still happens via text media. The method of transforming original text into unintelligible cipher text before sending it through insecure channel is called encryption and the reverse process is decryption. Modern day encryption is broadly classified into two categories – Symmetric key or private key cryptography and Asymmetric key or public key cryptography. This paper presents a detail survey on symmetric key cryptography, where same key is used for both encryption and decryption. All available private key encryption methods have been properly reviewed and analyzed, enlisting their advantages and limitations over each other.