Wondering why you need hashing? Imagine, you are trying to provide customer data to your partner brands for retargeting across the web or even to your programmatic provider/agency to use in a campaign. But you then worry about sharing your customer data for data monetization.

Besides, day in and out, high profile data breaches are sensationalizing the sensitive customer data spectrum and becoming a marketers trauma. Worried on what to do next?

We have the solution for you. Hashing it is!

What Is Hashing?

Hashing is a technique that distributes data inputs uniformly across an array by coding it into a snippet. It is a coding mechanism that converts any data input into a string of alphanumeric characters, and the output coming out as a hash. This cryptographic mathematical process adds an extra layer of protection to the input data.

What Are the Properties Of a Hashing Function?

A hash function has the following properties:

Deterministic

Each hash value is unique, and the code remains constant regardless of the number of times you run the same data through the hashing algorithm.

Agility

Computing or calculating the hash of any amount of data by coming up with an identifier is very high-speed, ideally within a fraction of a second.

Avalanche Effect

The hash code output will always remain the same as long as the data does not get changed. However, a slight change in the input data will give different output data.

Pre-image resistance

Hashing is a one-way road to data security and storing it simply and effectively for permanent. Hash functions hide information about the input to make it difficult to determine the original message based on the output. There is no way of reversing the hashing process and transforming them to get back the original data.

Collision Resistance

It is tough to find collisions. Each input will have a unique hash. That means finding two distinct input hashes that produce the same output hash is virtually not possible.

How Does Hashing Work?

Hashes find its uses significantly in IT for password storage, digital signatures, file verification systems, message authentication codes, etc. Hash functions also provide identity solutions to files, fingerprinting, indexing data in hash tables, or for detecting duplicates.

The hashing algorithm takes the infinite arbitrary input of bits, applies calculations to them and gives a final output of a finite number of bits. The primary idea lies in using a deterministic algorithm that can take in one input and generate a fixed length string every time. Consequently, the same input will always give the same output.

What Are the Main Types of Hashing Algorithms?

Have a look:

MD5- Message Digest algorithm 5

The MD family comprises hash functions MD2, MD4, MD5 and MD6. MD5 is the fastest hashing algorithm included in the .NET Framework. In 2004, collisions were found in MD5. Further to the reports of this collision attack, its recommendation became less.

CRC32- Cyclic Redundancy Check

CRC32 is a checksum that derives a 32-bit long digest that checks if a compressed file was damaged while being transferred. In particular, they are used as a hashed function in industrial networks, where the hardware capability is usually heavily bounded, and real cryptographic hashes can be a considerable choice.

SHA-1 – Secure Hashing Algorithm

SHA is specified as the hash algorithm in the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). It was later defined as the SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 algorithms, named after the length of the hash code that each produces. These new algorithms are variations of SHA-1 but are sufficiently recent that their cryptographic security remains open.

Tiger

Tiger is a cryptographic hash function with a 192-bit hash value that ensures data privacy and more. It usually truncates its output to form 160-bit and 128-bit hash functions.

The different hashing algorithms have different purposes of serving; some are used for the type of input data while some are known for their security efficacy.

Are there any possibilities of hashing attacks?

Now, if you are worrying over the chances of data privacy, that there can be a hash attack, then it is close to no. A hash attack can only occur when two separate inputs generate the same hash output.

But since hash functions have infinite input length and a predefined output length, thus it is rare for a collision to occur. So specifically it is preferred that we use a longer hash value, so that the possibility of a hash attack gets less.

What Are Some Important Applications Of Hashing?

Hashing finds its use in some of the following cases:

It encrypts data signatures or accumulating fingerprinting data, hashing them. Further, it stores both the hashed values and data in some server.

This helps when you are storing any bulk data into online cloud storage platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox. The file undergoes compressiond to a fixed size, as a result, even the performance glitches will be minimized with compressed size.

It checks the file integrity of a transferred file sent by any user. You can check if the data file was hampered or not by any third party, or whether the copying is correct or not.

Hashing ensures that when the password is sent from client to server. The server then compares the hash value with the password, and if they sync, it means no corruption is there. Thus, hash functions are for storing passwords of logins and later for verification procedures.

It finds applications in scripting and occasionally for authentication in Cloud profiles. As a result, you can ensure that the files are identical without even opening and comparing the enormous chunks of data.

Hash algorithms distinguish a specific file or to detect duplicates.

Even in data structures and programming languages like JAVA, hashing is a religious practice.

Besides, hashes are also applicable in data-onboarding. Here offline data undergoes anonymization by hashing algorithms to safeguard personally identifiable information in a privacy-compliant manner.

Hashing: Here Are Your Key Takeaways

In conclusion, hashing as a useful tool of audience monetization and data governance verifies that the data copying between two resources happens correctly. It also checks if the datasets are identical without opening and comparing them. It finds significant application in encrypting and decrypting digital signatures.

In addition, hashing makes it quicker to find the item using a short hash function than to locate it using the original value. Thus, you can use it for retrieval of items in a database as well.

Besides, it ensures the non-tampering of messages during transmission and therefore plays a vital role in the data governance system. You can also make significant profits through data monetization by coding your algorithm and utilizing arrays for node storage.

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