Types of Cryptographic Function
There are three major types of cryptographic function which differ in functionality and performance
Secret Key Cryptography is what we are most familiar with and has medium performance and functionality. It has one secret key
Public Key Cryptography is a remarkable idea with some very important and non-intuitive capabilities. It is computationally intense and requires some infrastructure to implement. It involves one secret (called private) and one public key known to everybody.
- Based on computational infeasibility of factoring large numbers which can be found by multiplying two primes
Hash functions (or one way transformations) involve zero keys and encrypt in a way that cannot be decrypted. It is very fast
Methods are combined to produce hybrid approaches that combine necessary speed and functionality