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Question

Which of the following is a limitation of using symmetric encryption for securing communications?

This question was previously asked in
SSC CGL 2025 Tier 1 Question Paper (25-Sep-2025) (Shift 3)
The correct answer is

Key distribution and management become challenging

Symmetric encryption uses a single shared secret key that is used both to encrypt the plaintext and to decrypt the resulting ciphertext.

Because both the sender and the receiver must possess the very same key, that key has to be delivered to every party through some secure channel and then kept safe on each side.

As the number of communicating parties grows, the number of distinct keys and the effort to distribute and store them securely rises sharply, which is the core weakness of the approach.

So the key limitation is that Key distribution and management become challenging.

In fact symmetric algorithms such as AES are fast and computationally light compared with asymmetric ones, so the claims that they are too slow or need more resources than asymmetric encryption are wrong.

Symmetric encryption is also perfectly suitable for data at rest (it is widely used for disk and database encryption), so the statement that it cannot be used for data at rest is incorrect.

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Important Questions from Network Security

  1. A ________ is a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network.

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