From the course: Cisco CCNP SCOR Security (350-701) Cert Prep: 1 Security Concepts and Network Security

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Hashing

Hashing

- [Instructor] Hashing is the process of generating an output value from a known input by use of a mathematical function. The property that makes hashing work, is the fact that, as long as the input value does not change, the output value will always be the same. Complicated algorithms can quickly compute an output value, although the output value is not easily reversed. That is to say, it's difficult to determine the original input value from the known output. This property makes hash algorithms a common and reliable way to ensure data integrity. As a very simple example, consider the following input value and hash algorithm. We have the input value 4,986. We have a very simplified version of a hash algorithm, which is the input value multiplied by 6,563. The input would be inserted into the hash algorithm in order to compute the hash value, and the resulting hash value is just under 32 million, as seen here on screen. Now it would be difficult to determine that the hash value of…

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