The most common and trusted type of security is Cryptography.
Encryption is a set of protocols
that scrambles the data as it travels the network so that it appears
to be coded. Only the intended receiver can convert the scrambled
information into meaningful data.
Authentication is required to prove its identity. In this process,
a phrase with your password is encrypted,
it travels across the network jumbled, and the security server on the
receiving end uses your password to decrypt
the phrase.
According to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html) PGP
or Pretty Good (TM) Privacy is a high-security cryptographic software
application that allows people to exchange messages with both privacy
and authentication.
With Public
Key Encryption, everyone has a well-known public key and another
key that is private. Encrypted data travels to your location, but if
your private
key is not intended to decrypt
the data, you will not be able read the information.
Another type of security that is written into the operating
system is called Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL). SSL provides secure network connections to
the computers on the Internet. For more information on SSL, visit the
following sites: