.NET Security and Cryptography

Windows Security Comes of Age

Security and cryptography have always been recognized as important issues in multiuser and enterprise-level computing. Even in the early mainframe systems of the mid-1960s, such as System/360,^[12] multiuser operating systems were designed with careful attention given to user authentication, program isolation, auditing, and privacy. Symmetric cryptographic algorithms, such as the Data Encryption Standard (DES), were used heavily in mainframe applications by banks and governments by the late 1970s. UNIX^[13] systems continued to treat security as a first-class design requirement throughout its history. In the early 1990s, UNIX systems made use of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography in various technologies and protocols, ...