Towards Total Security A cryptography pioneer, Crypto AG was among the earliest providers of mechanical and electrical enciphering machines. These produced random alphabetic substitution of textual messages, which replaced relatively easily-broken encoded communications. Today, Crypto AG remains pre-eminent but the products are of electronic character. During the 1950s, the knowledge to undertake electronic enciphering was available, although underlying enabling technologies were not. By making full use of the technology available, it can be safely stated that our implementation of modern cryptography is for all practical purposes unbreakable.
Cryptography is an arcane science, baffling to mathematically-unsophisticated laymen.
Fundamental to the technique is the generation of pseudo-random numbers called key variables, known only to message originators and recipients. Keys are applied to digitised messages through proprietary algorithms, so that messages are completely meaningless to recipients not possessing vital key data. Possession of the algorithms alone does not compromise security, since intercepted data is unintelligible without knowledge of the key. Human factors are the only security risks. Message originators, secretaries and cipher clerks as examples of deliberate or unwitting passers of key variables to electronic eavesdroppers.