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Article: ONLINE SECURITY: DATA ENCRYPTION.
- Article from:
- New Media Age
- Article date:
- March 24, 2005
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Centaur Communications Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If you're transmitting sensitive data over the Web, it's important to be sure it's secure. Fiona Harvey examines standards for encryption
We owe the early development of the computer to encryption technology. Working on the Enigma machine to break German codes in the Second World War, Alan Turing and colleagues developed much of the theory that was to inform computer science in its early days. Encryption and decryption lend themselves to solution by machines, as they require a hefty amount of number-crunching and rely on complex algorithms to scramble the data.
Today, encryption has reached levels Turing could only have dreamed of. The keys used ...