Asymmetric Cryptography
Search Security, Tuesday, March 12th, 2024
Asymmetric cryptography, also known as public key cryptography, is a process that uses a pair of related keys -- one public key and one private key -- to encrypt and decrypt a message and protect it from unauthorized access or use.
A public key is a cryptographic key a person can use to encrypt a message so it can only be decrypted by the intended recipient with their private key. A private key -- also known as a secret key -- is shared only with the key's initiator.
When someone wants to send an encrypted message, they pull the intended recipient's public key from a public directory and use it to encrypt the message before sending it. The recipient of the message can decrypt the message using their related private key.
If the sender encrypts the message using their private key, the message can be decrypted only using that sender's public key, thus authenticating the sender. These encryption and decryption processes happen automatically; users do not need to physically lock and unlock the message.