Risks

1.

Analysis of Hardware costs: We can only use the results published by proponents of the algorithms. Such results may not be exactly applicable for the environment which we are studying. They can only show approximations and not the exact values.

2.

Choice of algorithm and optimization: Optimizing an algorithm for hardware/software is something that is beyond the scope of this project. We will use optimized implementations where available. We make no claims to hand-optimize them or adapt them in an effective manner for our study.

3.

Software simulation: Software encryption can be simulated only where possible (eg, Desktops and PDAs). For other cases, we will assume a dedicated hardware unit performing encryption.

4.

Technology Projections: We assume only current computation environments and their immediate extensions in the future.

5.

Workload: Obtaining realistic workloads for the applications we propose to study could be a problem.