A security engineer must enable confidential file transfers with a new vendor. The engineer wants a solution that avoids sharing a secret key beforehand yet still lets both parties encrypt and decrypt messages securely by using mathematically related keys. Which cryptographic approach satisfies this requirement?
Asymmetric encryption, also called public-key cryptography, relies on a mathematically related key pair: a public key that can be shared openly and a private key that is kept secret. Because only the corresponding private key can decrypt data encrypted with the public key, parties do not need to exchange a secret key in advance, thereby eliminating the key-distribution problem. Symmetric encryption requires a single shared key, which must be distributed securely; steganography hides-but does not encrypt-data; and hashing algorithms create fixed-length digests rather than enabling reversible encryption.
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What is the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption?
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How do public and private keys work in asymmetric encryption?
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What are some common use cases for asymmetric encryption?