Secured data exchange

The common method for securing the exchange of data is to encrypt it. Encryption means that the data transferred over the communication line is encoded in a special way at the sending end, and decoded using the same algorithm in reverse at the receiving end. The data that goes through the communication channel is meaningless to an eavesdropper, even if he does succeed in intercepting the data. Unless the eavesdropper can decode the data, he cannot read it. The encryption strength is dependent upon the length of the encryption key. The key that is used to encrypt/decrypt the data is a very long number. The longer the number, the harder it is, exponentially, to decode the data. Lengths of keys vary between 32, 64, 128, 256 bit and so on. The minimum length for good security is 64-bit. The problem with selecting a very long key is the computing power that is required to encode/decode the message. So selecting a very long key can mean slow processing time. Privacy and data integrity have their own software protocols but are generally handled in the same way as described above.