IT Glossary

Encryption is a technology to scramble data in order to make it useless and not understandable to unauthorized parties in case of data interception.

There are two types of encryption:

In symmetrical encryption a common key, called private key, is used by both encrypting and decrypting parties and this key should be kept secret and out of reach of unauthorized parties.

In asymmetrical encryption two key types are used:

Private keys are always kept secret,like in case of symmetrical encryption, but there is no need to keep public key out of reach of other parties.

Every computer has its own private key.

SSL is protocol that uses asymmetrical encryption technology for transferring data over the Internet.

The sending computer encrypts the data using a public key and the receiving computer decrypts it and retrieves the original data by using its private key resided on this computer.

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