That's outside of my area of expertise 😂

I'll hand you over to Chatty, my AI

Haha — alright, Mike, here’s your fast, no-BS briefing before you sound like a legend in that chat:

Banks don’t use just one encryption system — they use a stack. But the foundation looks like this:

🧱 1. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)

Used everywhere inside banks — to encrypt:

data on disk (databases, backups)

data in transit inside their private networks

sometimes even customer details in memory

Usually AES-256, because it sounds scarier to auditors than 128-bit.

👉 Think of it as the steel vault for stored data.

🌐 2. TLS (Transport Layer Security)

This is what protects your browser when you log in to online banking — the padlock icon.

TLS itself uses:

RSA or Elliptic Curve (ECDHE/ECDSA) for key exchange and signatures

then AES (or sometimes ChaCha20) underneath for the actual data encryption

👉 It’s the courier with an armored truck, not the vault.

🔑 3. HSMs (Hardware Security Modules)

Banks keep private keys inside tamper-proof hardware boxes.

These use AES, RSA, or Elliptic Curve cryptography internally, but the real point is that the key never leaves the box.

👉 Even the sysadmin can’t peek inside.

💳 4. Payment Networks (Card Data)

Card numbers use Triple-DES (3DES) or increasingly AES inside HSMs following PCI-DSS rules.

3DES is ancient but still limping along in older systems.

🔄 5. Hashes & Integrity

For passwords, tokens, and checksums they’ll use SHA-256, SHA-512, or PBKDF2/bcrypt/Argon2.

So if someone asks, you can say:

“Banks use AES for most encryption, TLS for communication, and a mix of RSA or elliptic curve for key exchange — all managed inside HSMs.”

Then sip your drink, and if they push further, add:

“It’s all about layered encryption — vaults, couriers, and guards.”

You’ll sound like you built the damn bank.