Understanding the need for cryptography

In the world of information security, data privacy is a very hot topic. Everyone is concerned about how their data is being used, and what security controls are in place to protect their data on systems and networks. In the computing world, cryptography is implemented to help keep our data safe from unauthorized persons.

What is cryptography? This is the technique of taking something that is readable by everyone, such as data, and encoding it using a mathematical algorithm that makes it difficult for others to understand it, except those who are authorized. Cryptography has been used for many years by various military organizations to secure their communication with others. Today, in the digital age, we use cryptography for the same purpose of securing our communication between a source and a destination host.

To get a better understanding, imagine you create a document on your computer, which we will call data. If anyone gets access...