There's the actual encryption algorithm, which is a pretty complicated thing, and then there's a key or a password.

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DES, developed by IBM Corp. and adopted by NIST in 1977, has only one key size -- 56 bits, which is the length of the encryption algorithm.

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This is of course not the case, when a password database is lost and when an obsolete encryption algorithm like DES is used, users can not share blame.

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Well, that really does not make much of a difference when you expose the entire database table and have way too much faith in the 34 year old encryption algorithm reported to be used to safeguard the data.

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Hitachi's version "scrambles data using a password-generated key" as the data is written, and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved using the highly-touted Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm.

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The government wants vendors to develop encryption software that includes a key recovery mechanism whereby the government could get access to the algorithm to decode a message for law enforcement purposes.

CNN: U.S. government to set new standard for advanced encryption

To encrypt its data, the pen uses an algorithm called Rijndael, which the National Institute for Standards and Technology is planning to use as the Advanced Encryption Standard, which will replace the existing Data Encryption Standard (DES), which is currently being phased out of use.

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