12 - Data Representation GapFill

Encryption of text data involves processing  open textUnicodeASCIIplaintext – that's the unencrypted text – with some kind of  cipherencoderdecodertrigger – an algorithm that turns it into a form that does not make sense to a human reader. That form is called  key textclosed textciphertexttransposition text, and it must be subsequently  compressedencrypteddecompresseddecrypted before it can be put to any use.

There are various means of doing this, to varying degrees of sophistication. Some systems use one or more keys to encrypt and decrypt the data. In  matched-pairsingle-keysemanticsymmetric encryption, the same key is used to encrypt the data as to decrypt it. This form of encryption is often used for data storage and encrypting  Credit Card informationPKIBlockchainDigital Signatures, in part because it's  more securequickercheapermore reliable than the alternative method.

That alternative method, where security is a higher priority than speed, is called  asymmetrickey-securedual-keyunbalanced encryption, and it works slightly differently. When a host needs to encrypt a piece of data, it uses the  primepublicprivateprimary key of the  sendernetworkISPrecipient. That key cannot then decrypt the data. The encrypted data is sent, whereupon the recipient host uses the   publicprimarytertiaryprivate key of the  ISPnetworkrecipientsender in order to  reassembletranslatedecryptdecompress the data.