The Internet, comprised of millions of interconnected computers, allows nearly instantaneous communication and transfer of information, around the world. People use e -mail to correspond with one another. The World Wide Web is used for online business, data distribution, marketing, research, learning, and a myriad of other activities. For a web site to be secure all of the data transmitted between the computers where the data is kept and where it is received must be encrypted. This allows people to do online banking, online trading, and make online purchases with their credit cards, without worrying that any of their account information is being compromised.
Cryptography is very important to the continued growth of the Internet and electronic commerce.
By the turn of the century, commercial transactions on the Internet are expected to total hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This level of activity could not be supported without cryptographic security. It has been said that one is safer using a credit card over the Internet than within a store or restaurant. It requires much more work to seize credit card numbers over computer networks than it does to simply walk by a table in a restaurant and lay hold of a credit card receipt. These levels of security, though not yet widely used, give the means to strengthen the foundation with which e -commerce can grow.