Encryption

Encryption is the conversion of electronic data into another form, called ciphertext, which cannot be easily understood by anyone except authorized parties

History of encryption

The word encryption comes from the Greek word kryptos, meaning hidden or secret. The use of encryption is nearly as old as the art of communication itself. As early as 1900 BC, an Egyptian scribe used non-standard hieroglyphs to hide the meaning of an inscription. In a time when most people couldn't read, simply writing a message was often enough, but encryption schemes soon developed to convert messages into unreadable groups of figures to protect the message's secrecy while it was carried from one place to another. The contents of a message were reordered (transposition) or replaced (substitution) with other characters, symbols, numbers or pictures in order to conceal its meaning.