Different types of cryptography

- [Instructor] There are two main branches of cryptography.…We've got symmetric and asymmetric.…First, let's talk about symmetric.…So what makes something a symmetric cryptographic algorithm?…True to its name,…the core definition is really…that it uses the same key on both sides,…encryption and decryption.…It's symmetric.…So the same key is used to encrypt, as it is to decrypt.…You'll often hear this called secret key cryptography,…shared key cryptography, or private key cryptography.…

And while that seems like a lot of weird names for it,…it's actually pretty simple to remember…if you think about this one key fact.…In symmetric cryptography,…because the same key is used to encrypt as it is to decrypt,…keeping that key protected and private…is of the utmost importance.…So that's where the name secret and private come in,…is that you have to keep the key secret,…you have to keep the key private.…And because the same key…is used to encrypt as it is to decrypt,…it's a shared key.…So that's where those alternative names come from.…