Evaluating the performance of Symmetric Key Algorithms: AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and DES (Data Encryption Standard)

Encryption algorithms are known to be computational intensive. Internet and networks applications growing very fast, so the needs to protect. Encryption plays the very important role in information security system. On the other side, the symmetric key algorithms consume a significant amount of computed resources such as speed, time, memory and cost. The symmetrical algorithms AES and DES as a security enhancement. Current AES and DES standards are applied to encrypt and to protect. This paper provides evaluation of the most common encryption algorithms namely: AES (Rijndael) (Advanced Encryption Standard) and DES (Data Encryption Algorithm). A comparison has been conducted for those encryption algorithms at different setting speed, time and cost. Our results show that AES is more suitable than DES.