US Patent 11917072 Implementing opportunistic authentication of encrypted data

A computer-implemented method according to one embodiment includes compressing an uncompressed instance of data to create a compressed instance of data; encrypting the compressed instance of data in response to determining that a size of the compressed instance of data is less than a predetermined threshold; creating a message authentication code (MAC) for the encrypted compressed instance of data; and adding a variable-length zero pad and the MAC to the encrypted compressed instance of data to create a formatted string.