What does a cryptographer do?

What is a Cryptographer?

Are you interested in keeping messages and other data secrets away from the prying eyes of criminals or enemy governments? You may be interested in becoming a cryptographer!

Cryptography uses mathematically based encryption methods to keep cyber criminals at bay. Cryptographers develop algorithms, ciphers, and security systems to encrypt sensitive information and provide privacy for people and corporations.

What does a Cryptographer do?

Encryption was once used solely for military purposes, but in today's world, encryption is needed for all kinds of uses.

A. Cryptography is the science and art of designing algorithms for secret communication
B. Cryptanalysis is the study of "breaking" cryptographic designs
C. Cryptology = A combination of both A + B

Cryptography helps to build trust between businesses, and keeps hackers out of important data systems as much as possible. Most cryptography is done by computer software and specialized hardware devices.

Cryptographers provide technical support to governments, businesses and industry to solve security-related issues. They protect important information from interception or deletion, and can target weaknesses in security systems and algorithms. After detecting weaknesses, they can then design strong security systems to prevent further vulnerabilities.

Cryptographers may also be required to:

Develop and test mathematical models to analyze data and solve security problems
Test models for reliability and accuracy
Test new cryptography theories and applications
Look for weaknesses in wireless networks, cellphones, emails, etc.
Ensure credit cards, inter-bank, ATM, online transactions, etc., are secure
Ensure wireless networks are not illegally accessed or altered
Decode cryptic messages for military, political and law enforcement agencies
Update methods for efficient handling of cryptic processes
Advise work staff on cryptical/mathematical methods and applications

Are you suited to be a cryptographer?

Cryptographers have distinct personalities. They tend to be artistic individuals, which means they’re creative, intuitive, sensitive, articulate, and expressive. They are unstructured, original, nonconforming, and innovative. Some of them are also enterprising, meaning they’re adventurous, ambitious, assertive, extroverted, energetic, enthusiastic, confident, and optimistic.

Does this sound like you? Take our free career test to find out if cryptographer is one of your top career matches.

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What is the workplace of a Cryptographer like?

Cryptographers can build successful careers throughout the public and private sectors. They analyze and decipher encrypted data to help law enforcement or government agencies in solving crime, threats or security concerns, and also develop computational models that help solve problems in business, engineering, science, or other industries.

Cryptographers are also known as:
Signals Decoder Message Decoder Data Decoder Encryption Expert