A Comparative Survey on Symmetric Key Encryption Algorithms

Security is the most challenging aspects in the internet and network applications. Internet and networks applications are growing very fast, so the importance and the value of the exchanged data over the internet or other media types are increasing. Hence the search for the best solution to offer the necessary protection against the data intruders’ attacks along with providing these services in time is one of the most interesting subjects in the security related communities. Cryptography is the one of the main categories of computer security that converts information from its normal form into an unreadable form. The two main characteristics that identify and differentiate one encryption algorithm from another are its ability to secure the protected data against attacks and its speed and efficiency in doing so. There are basically two techniques of cryptography-Symmetric and Asymmetric .This paper provides a fair comparison between four most common symmetric key cryptography algorithms: RC2, RC4, RC5, and RC6.