Encryption: The Backbone of Security

In order to protect sensitive data being sent across the internet, a process called encryption is used. Encryption uses some sort of mathematical function that transforms the data, making it unreadable by everyone except the person who possesses the key, which is used to transform the data back into its original state. When the data is transformed, the process is called encrypting. When the data is received and converted back into its original form, the process is called decrypting.
How well an encryption technique works depends upon several factors. First, the larger the key is the safer the data will be. What is more important is what technique is used. The transformation must create a set of data that does not seem to fit any kind of patterns, otherwise it would be simple for a computer program to simulate data and find the function that was used.
One of the problems encountered when data is encrypted is that somehow the encryption key has to be known by both parties. This creates a problem because the encryption key has to be sent unencrypted, or encrypted by some other encryption technique. However, this means that if the other encryption technique has already been cracked then the new key will be immediately know. Public key cryptography, also known as asymmetric cryptography overcomes this problem. This algorithm is employed by SSL encryption, which is used for many banking sites and to verify passwords for emails. This algorithm uses two keys; one is used to encrypt the message and the other is used to decrypt it. Therefore only one key needs to be made public, and the other can be kept private. The public key can be used by anyone to encrypt a message, but it can only be decrypted by the private key. This increases the overall security of the encryption algorithm.