The story begins: When Julius Caesar sent messages to his trusted acquaintances, he didn't trust the messengers. So he replaced every A by a D, every B by a E, and so on through the alphabet. Only someone who knew the ''shift by 3 rule could decipher his messages. A cryptosystem or cipher system is a method of disguising messages so that only certain people can see through the disguise. Cryptography is the art of creating and using cryptosystems.

Encryption is the transformation of data into a form (a cipher) that is, for most intents and purposes, impossible to read with out the appropriate decoder (a cryptographic key). Its purpose is to ensure privacy by keeping information hidden from anyone for whom it is not intended, even those who have access to the encrypted data. Decryption is the reverse of encryption; it is the transformation of encrypted data back into an intelligible form.

Secret-key cryptography is sometimes referred to as symmetric cryptography. It is the more traditional form of cryptography, in which a single key can be used to encrypt and decrypt a message. Secret-key cryptography not only deals with encryption, but it also deals with authentication.

Public Key Cryptography is a method for securely exchanging messages, based on assigning two complimentary keys (one public, one private) to the individuals involved in a transaction. Public Key Cryptography is based on the science of encryption, the mathematical scrambling and unscrambling of messages.

Public key (asymmetric) cryptography is a system based on pairs of keys called public key and private key. The public key is published while the private key is kept secret with the owner. The need for a sender and a receiver to share a secret key and trust some communications channel is eliminated. This concept was introduced in 1976 by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.

Before any information is uploaded into your CopySafe, it is automatically compressed and encrypted. You will have a password, also called an encryption key, for accessing your data. It is the only way to decrypt your files after retrieval. It is very important to notate this password/key and keep it in a safe place for future reference.

The U.S. and other countries have export controls on encryption software, so I can only export non-cryptographic versions from my web site. These versions will be identified with "(no crypto)" after the version number under Help|About. I will post links to sites outside the U.S. that have the fully cryptographic versions available.

Public Key Cryptography or Asymmetric Cryptography forms the basis of digital signatures and Public Key Infrastructure. This technique makes use of a pair of mathematically related, but different keys - a private key and a public key. The private key is kept secret and is only accessible to its owner; the public key is intended for wide distribution. If one key is used to encrypt a message, then only the other key in the pair can be used to decrypt it.

Public Key Cryptography Standards are a set of standard protocols for the development of a public key infrastructure (PKI). These standards include RSA encryption, password-based encryption, extended certificate syntax, and cryptographic message syntax for the S/MIME secure e-mail standard. Developed in 1991 by RSA Laboratories with representatives from various computer vendors, PKCS is today widely deployed in public key cryptography systems.

A combination of both. The action of encrypting information with public-key cryptography is significantly slower than encrypting with a secret key. However the drawback of the secret-key system is that, secret keys must be transmitted either manually or through a communication channel, and there may be a chance that others can discover the secret keys during transmission. This is not a problem with public-key cryptography, as private keys never need to be transmitted or revealed to anyone.

Very Important. Without it, your backup data will remain encrypted and unreadable. All data that is selected for backup is encrypted before leaving your computer. We have no way at all of reading this information should you lose your encryption key.

If you need to change your password or encryption key, select either the Change Password or Change Encryption Key buttons from the application that is also supplied by Your-Data. Changing your encryption key involves intensive processing on our servers and may take several minutes. It should therefore not be done unless your encryption key was compromised.

DigiVault, security is of utmost importance. Therefore, if you misplace your 'encryption key' we will be unable to restore any of your data stored on our servers.

We cannot help you if you lose your Personalized Encryption Key. Your encryption and decryption key is designed for your security. If you do not have access to the original software and do not have the printed page that you were prompted to print during the installation, then you willl not be able to access your backup! With 128-bit AES Encryption there is no "reset" key.

No. We cannot recover your encryption key, this is chosen and set by you and is maintained by you and your system, making it invisible to us and anyone else for that matter. top

This depends on the server software and browsers used. Modern browsers and servers (from 2000 onwards) encipher the data with 128-bit, thus guaranteeing a very high degree of protection. When you are purchasing a SSL certificate, make sure it is suitable for this 128-bit encryption. This way, you provide visitors to your website with optimum protection.