Cryptography A network can be secured through device hardening, AAA access control, firewall features, and IPS implementations.

These combined features protect the infrastructure devices as well as the end devices within the local network. But how is network traffic protected when traversing the public Internet? The answer is through cryptographic methods. Secure communications involves a few primary tasks: Authentication - Guarantees that the message is not a forgery and does actually come from who it states it comes from. Integrity - Similar to a checksum function in a frame, guarantees that no one intercepted the message and altered it. Confidentiality - Guarantees that if the message is captured, it cannot be deciphered.

What are the advantages of the system?

The simplest definition available as to, what cryptography is is that it is the science of using mathematics to encrypt and decrypt information, which means putting into or decoding from a mathematical language. What are the ways to use this technology and learn what are advantages? So, as you can see, this seems as though cryptography would be very difficult. Nevertheless, this is important because everything on your computer is stored in cryptography. Cryptography becomes even more complex though. This is because humans recognize numbers as digits from 0 to 9, but your computer can only recognize 0 and 1. As such, this binary system uses bits instead of digits. In order to convert bits to digits you will need to multiply the number of bits by 0.3. This will then provide you with a good estimation of what it stands for. Now there are some other definitions that are important to understand here. First, you should understand that a brute force attack is when all of the possible combinations of numbers are used to either decrypt or encrypt materials. Secondly, a dictionary attack occurs whenever a person tries using all possible known passwords, which is surprisingly a small amount, to form an attack. Of course, there are some people, such as the government, who would profit from knowing cryptography and are thus known as an adversary. On the other hand, those who should not profit from this access are known as a key logger.

All of this probably still sounds very difficult to understand. This is why it takes so much education if you want to work as a cryptographer. There are only some people who can truly understand all of this and thus use it to help all of the rest of us with our daily computer needs. Of course, it is also why the people who work in this field make such good money doing so. Why do you need cryptosystems, Government, private companies and universities exchange data over Internet with their trusted partners? They want full secure data exchange; no hacker or third party should be able to intercept the important data. To over come privacy, secrecy and importance of data being hacked or stolen, cryptography provides two kinds of cryptosystems. First is "Symmetric" system under, which cryptosystems use the same secret key to encrypt or decrypt a message received data packet from trusted partners. The other cryptosystem is asymmetric system under, which two different keys are used to encrypt and decrypt the message or received data packet. On public key is used to encrypt the data or message and the private key on receiving end is used to decrypt the message or data packet. Now the question is how do we send these keys to trusted partners. Other than latest tools used in monitoring, securing data exchange, keys are passed through trusted couriers to avoid data being intercepted by hackers. Encryption - "is a process of changing or converting normal text or data information into gibberish text". Decryption - "is a process of changing or converting gibberish text back to correct message or data by using encryption method". http://www.spywareantivirus.info Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sanjay_Kak

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Cryptography provides algorithms to keep the message secure while transmitted on Internet. Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_advantages_of_using_cryptography#ixzz1c9bspG4Y

Message privacy Sender and recipient authentication Non-repudiation Anonymity

Fairness Accountability Untraceability Dividability Transferability Off-line operations Universality Data distribution operation (TV, CD-ROM) Selective reception Secrecy in Transmission Secrecy in Storage Integrity in Storage Authentication of Identity

Which protocols they are using/supporting? What are some of their applications?

Secure messaging/mail Secure network communications Network authentication Electronic voting Electronic notary Digital money (digital wallet) or Electronic Cashcards (credit cards, ATM/debit cards) Data distribution Credentialing Systems Electronic Signatures Systems Using Changing Keys Covert communication using Steganogrphy Security mechanisms for secure ID cards, smartcards, biometrics

**( http://electronicsbus.com/cryptography-encryption-algorithms-decryptionnetwork-data-security/)

What is their current status (are they improving or retiring)? What future do you foresee for this technology?