Encryption - Encryption In The E-commerce Arena

ENCRYPTION IN THE E-COMMERCE ARENA

In the 2000s, encryption was the preferred method of disguising and protecting information during Internet transactions. Encryption was at the heart of many of the key technological breakthroughs furthering e-commerce. In particular, it served as the cornerstone of digital certificates and digital signatures, which were increasingly used to authenticate, secure, and sign electronic documents on the Internet using public-key encryption. Public-key encryption refers to an open encryption system in which a number of individuals maintain a public key or code to encrypt documents, but where only one entity retains the private key that can decrypt them. In an e-commerce transaction, for instance, the online merchant maintains the private key while its customers use the public key.

In 2000, RSA's Bidzos won the praise of Ed Hart, the former deputy director of information security at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), for laying the foundation for the commercial encryption industry in the 1980s, and for having the prescience of the importance of encryption technologies for the development of electronic business. Lynn McNulty, a former official at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) told Computer Reseller News that Bidzos "almost single-handedly commercialized the use of public key encryption." Bidzos had long insisted, since his early days at RSA in the mid-and late 1980s, that the commercialization of and relaxed export controls for encryption technology was crucial for the commercialization of the Internet and the development of e-commerce, long before most businesses, let alone consumers, had even heard of the Internet.