Assurance - allows for a trust factor between parties. This is possible by authenticating authorized parties that are not able to deny their transactions took place. Integrity - ensures no unauthorized person has tampered with a message or transaction The overall benefit cryptography provides is the peace of mind you will give your customers in doing business with you, and reducing your risk of fraud. Types of Encryption Shared-Key Probably the best way to explain cryptography is to compare it to a lock. Locks are normally made with a unique key for locking and unlocking, with millions of key combinations.
Encryption is the locking of a message and decryption is the unlocking.
The technical term for this model is symmetric cryptography . Shared-key encryption requires both sender and receiver to have the same key, assuming that the key holder is authorized and authenticated to read the message. With shared-key encryption, if someone figures out the key they are able to decrypt your messages. Obviously, this poses a serious problem as not only can your message be read, but it can also be altered. Because the size of a key is larger than is humanly possible to remember, they must be communicated in electronic form.