Secure Communications

While electronic communications has created opportunities for closer relationships with customers and partners it has also presented the very real threat of prying eyes getting access to sensitive information.

The growing acceptance of e-commerce where credit card, account information and personal details are required to be provided on the internet has heightened concerns not only about security but about privacy.

Encryption is the process of transforming information so it can't be read or understood by anyone but the intended recipient. Decryption is the process of transforming that information so that it can be read again in the form intended. Both processes use a mathematical algorithm to scramble and unscramble messages based on a number called a key.

The two kinds of encryption systems in common use are symmetric, which uses the same secret key to encode and decode a message, and asymmetric or public key encryption, which use a single public key to encrypt a message and a different public key to decrypt it.

Symmetric-key encryption plays an important role in the secure sockets layer (SSL) protocol, which is widely used for authentication over TCP/IP networks. Many web sites use SSL to obtain confidential information such as credit card numbers. The pages that use a SSL connection start with https: instead of http:.

Public-key encryption involves a pair of keys - a public and a private key. Data encrypted with your public key can be decrypted only with your private key.

Public-key encryption is used for public key infrastructure (PKI) digital certificates, which authenticate the validity of each party involved in an internet transaction. PKI also verifies to the recipient that this information has not been tampered with or modified. It also authenticates the information has come from the source indicated and confirms the sender’s identity. This means that the sender cannot at some later stage claim the information was not sent.