Frankie wants to establish her organization’s encryption standard. Which of the following should she recommend for a default encryption algorithm for general use if cryptographic strength is a critical feature?

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is the most commonly accepted and used encryption standard as of this writing. Selecting a longer key length like 256 over a 128-bit option provides greater resistance to brute-force attacks. SHA-1 and SHA-2 are hashing algorithms, not encryption algorithms.