Privacy What Developers and IT Professionals Should Know

Encryption

In general terms, encryption is a way to transform readable information into an unreadable form. One of the earliest forms of encryption involved adding a constant number to each value in a string, such as 4. This is also known as Caesar's cipher, after Julius Caesar, who used it to send messages to his armies in the field.^[10] For example, using a shift value of 4, the string ABC would become EFG. If you are new to cryptography, the book Applied Cryptography would be a great book to add to your collection.^[11]

^[10] The Caesar's cipher, http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/cpsc/cryptography/caesar.html. A tool to create or decrypt Caesar's ciphers can be found at http://codebreaker.dids.com/caesar.htm.

^[11] Applied Cryptography: Protocols, ...