What is asymmetric cryptography?

Asymmetric cryptography techniques allow for extremely secure communication between two parties. Chances are, you've encountered this technology before, even if you never knew what it was called. For example, each time you visit a website with an address starting with "https," you're dealing with asymmetric encryption.

How does asymmetric encryption work?

Asymmetric encryption uses a mathematically related pair of keys for encryption and decryption: a public key and a private key. If the public key is used for encryption, then the related private key is used for decryption. If the private key is used for encryption, then the related public key is used for decryption.

Is asymmetric encryption safe?

With asymmetric encryption, this is not a problem since two separate keys are used – the public key to encrypt data and the private key to decrypt data. The public key can be easily shared with anyone and poses no risk to your data being decrypted, since the private key is needed for decryption.