Confidentiality or the protection of data from unauthorized viewing is the most basic form of data security. By obscuring the message as cipher text, encryption allows database users to encode the original data so that the confidentiality of the data is assured. For example, encrypting raw data ( like one's entire hard drive) can be done simply to ensure that if the network has been hacked, the data on the disk is still secure from unauthorized viewing by someone from outside. Database encryption can also be used to ensure the confidentiality of e-mail messages being sent over the Internet.