Building Secure Microsoft® ASP.NET Applications

Chapter 4. Secure Communication

Many applications pass security sensitive data across networks to and from end users and between intermediate application nodes. Sensitive data might include credentials used for authentication, or data such as credit card numbers or bank transaction details. To guard against unwanted information disclosure and to protect the data from unauthorized modification while in transit, the channel between communication end points must be secured.

Secure communication provides the following two features:

• Privacy. Privacy is concerned with ensuring that data remains private and confidential, and cannot be viewed by eavesdroppers who may be armed with network monitoring software. Privacy is usually provided by means of encryption. ...