A Little about PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
PGP Stands for Pretty Good Privacy, It is an encryption technique intented to provide privacy and authentication in communication using cryptography. PGP is widely utilized for encryption and decryption of different formats of files, e-mails and other important data. PGP was developed in 1991 by Philip R. “Phil” Zimmermann, Jr. he wrote the popular Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) program, and made it available through public FTP for download, the first widely available program implementing public-key cryptography.
How does PGP work ?
When you need to send some secret(s) to another person, at that point you require their public key obviously. Think about the general population key as their cell phone number. You have to know the number before you can call them. At that point you can utilize PGP to encrypt the data (messages, emails, documents) as required for that individual and it naturally incorporates the encryption key expected to decrypt that data.
When sending digital signatures, PGP uses an efficient algorithm that generates a hash (a mathematical summary) from the user’s name and other signature information. This hash code is then encrypted with the sender’s private key. The receiver uses the sender’s public key to decrypt the hash code. If it matches the hash code sent as the digital signature for the message, the receiver is sure that the message has arrived securely from the stated sender. PGP’s RSA version uses the MD5 algorithm to generate the hash code. PGP’s Diffie-Hellman version uses the SHA-1 algorithm to generate the hash code.
Where would you be able to utilize PGP?
Pretty Good Privacy can be widely utilized to to authenticate digital certificates and encrypt/decrypt texts, emails, files. Symantec, for example, offers PGP-based products such as Symantec File Share Encryption for encrypting files shared across a network and Symantec Endpoint Encryption for full disk encryption on desktops, mobile devices and removable storage. In the case of using PGP technology for files and drives instead of messages, the Symantec products allows users to decrypt and re-encrypt data via a single sign-on.
