Security via technology Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Security via technology - Research Paper Example Public key cryptography is a combination of elaborately created procedures and standards that are meant to protect communications from being listened to or tampered with or being affected by impersonation attacks. Public key encryption enables the free distribution of public keys and only the people who have been permitted are allowed to read the data that has been subjected to encryption through this key (Oppliger, 2011). Generally sending encrypted data entails encrypting the data to be sent with the encryption key that belongs to the receiver, and upon receiving the message, the receiver will decrypt the message using his or her own private key. In comparison to the symmetric-key encryption, the public –key encryption needs a lot more processing and may not be a practical option for the encryption and decryption of large amounts of information. Nonetheless, a public key can be used to send a symmetric key that can ultimately be used in the decryption of more data, which is the method that is employed by SSL/TLS protocol. Additionally, the decryption of data that has been encrypted using a private key can be decrypted using a public key that corresponds to it although this approach is not recommended when that data to be encrypted is sensitive (Vaudenay, 2005). Nevertheless, since it implies that any person who holds the public key, which is usually made available to everyone, has the capacity to decrypt the data. However, private key encryption is still useful as it means that the private key can be employed in signing data with digital signatures, which are critical requirements in electronic commerce as well as other cryptographic applications of a commercial nature. Mozilla Firefox, as well as other client software, can employ public keys wen confirming that a message has been signed with the proper private key and that it has not be interfered with after being signed. Even though the worldwide