Comparative Study of Performance in Cryptography Algorithms (Blowfish and Skipjack)

Problem statement: The main goal guiding the design of any encryption algorithm needs to be secured against unauthorized attacks. For all applied applications, performance and the cost of implementations are also important concerns. A data encryption algorithm would not be of much use if it is secure enough but slow in performance because it is a common repetition to embed encryption algorithms in other applications such as e-commerce, banking and online transaction processing applications. Inserting of encryption algorithms in other applications also prevents a hardware implementation and is thus a major cause of tainted overall performance of the system. Approach: In this study, the performance of the two of the popular secret key encryption algorithms (Blowfish and Skipjack) was compared. Results: Blowfish and Skipjack, had been implemented and their performance was compared by encrypting input files of varying contents and sizes. The algorithms had been implemented in a uniform language C#, using their standard specifications to allow a fair comparison of execution speeds. Conclusion: The performance results have been summarized and a conclusion has been presented. Based on the experiments, we can conclude that the Blowfish is the best performing algorithm for implementation.