AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard, and is a specification standard by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the security of data.  AES is a widely recognized and adapted cryptographic module used in the U.S., Canada and worldwide by military, government, financial institutions, and organizations all around the world as the standard for encrypting and decrypting of data.[1] There are different degrees of AES hardware encryption, for example 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit, with each key size providing an increased level of protection and complexity.  Essentially, AES encryption is a block of algorithms that "scrambles" the data into unreadable code for transport, then when reconnected to the user, is unscrambled again by the same algorithm when the right keys are provided.  These algorithms are highly complex. To put it into perspective as one researcher at Leuven University puts it, “if a hacker were to attempt to “break the code” to gain access to an AES 128-bit encrypted flash drive, the number of steps he would have to take is an 8 followed by 37 zeros.  This would take a trillion machines, testing a billion keys per second, two billion years to uncover an AES-128 key.” [2]