What Is Cryptography?

Cryptography is what makes online communication what it is today. Without the security and privacy it affords, we would never be able to:

• Transact financially online
• Verify sources of information
• Communicate privately
• Own private user accounts on websites

At its most basic, cryptography is about encrypting and decrypting data. Encryption transforms a key and input, called the "plaintext", into an encrypted output, called the "ciphertext". Only the person with the key can then decrypt the ciphertext back into the plaintext.