Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a widely used encryption algorithm that is used to secure electronic data. It is a symmetric key algorithm, which means that the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt data.

AES was selected by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001 as the replacement for the aging Data Encryption Standard (DES). It uses a block cipher to encrypt and decrypt data in blocks of 128 bits. The key length for AES can be 128, 192, or 256 bits.

AES is considered to be a very secure encryption algorithm and is used in many applications that require secure communication or data storage, such as online banking, e-commerce, and military communications. It is also used in popular encryption tools such as OpenSSL, GPG, and BitLocker. AES is a widely accepted and trusted encryption standard and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future.