What is Cryptography?

Cryptography is derived from the Greek word ‘cryptos,’ which means hidden.

Cryptography is the art of encrypting confidential information and messages before transmitting them to another computer or location and then decrypting them when they reach the intended destination.

In today’s modern world, hiding confidential information is a vital objective for any organization or country.

When this information needs to be transmitted to another location, it becomes vulnerable to hackers and eavesdroppers.

Cryptography presents different methods to make that transition of information from one location to another location secure and safe.

The process is simple yet very secure. First, the information is ciphered by the sender.

The sender encrypts that information and generates a key that the receiver would use to decipher that information.

After being encrypted, that information is sent to the sender using whatever medium is available.

When the encrypted information reaches its destination, it is decrypted using the key provided by the sender.

There are four fundamental objectives of cryptography:

– Confidentiality

– Integrity

– Non Repudiation

– Authentication

Three basic algorithms are used in cryptography:

– Secret key cryptography

– Public key cryptography

– Hash functions cryptography