These days it seems that concern over network security is at an all time high. Because of this, it's important to understand what's really happening when you encrypt your data. You might have assumed that when you enable encryption, a single type of encryption is at work. However, you're actually using two types of encryption. In this article, I'll introduce you to these two types of encryption and explain how they work together.
Most people assume that the various public key infrastructures use strictly public key technology.
This isn't the case. Many of the functions used within the Windows 2000 implementation of public key encryption use both public key and symmetric key encryption algorithms. To understand why this is the case, it's necessary to understand a little bit about how each encryption technology works. Symmetric key encryption involves using a single key to encrypt and decrypt data. For example, suppose that you took a document and placed it in a file cabinet and then locked the cabinet with a key.