Information Communication Technology ICT – 8 Safety and security | e-Consult

The primary purpose of encryption in protecting data transmitted over the internet is to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. Confidentiality means preventing unauthorized access to the data. Integrity ensures the data hasn't been altered during transmission. Authentication verifies the identity of the sender.

Symmetric encryption uses the same key for encryption and decryption. It's generally faster than asymmetric encryption. A real-world example is encrypting a file on a local computer using AES. It's efficient for encrypting large amounts of data when a secure channel already exists.

Asymmetric encryption uses a pair of keys – a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. It's slower than symmetric encryption but provides stronger security. A real-world example is using HTTPS on a website. The website's public key is used to encrypt the session key, which is then used for symmetric encryption of the data transmitted between the browser and the server. This allows secure communication even if the private key isn't known.