Private Key Encryption and Public Key Encryption. If these words don’t make a lot of sense to you then you should read this blog post to understand what they mean and maybe you will learn how incorporating them into your life can help you.
Defining The Key
First of all, we need to know what actually is Private Key and Public Key encryption before we start finding out about their differences and how they can be helpful.
Both Public Key and Private Key are a type of encryption:
Encryption is the process of converting a message or information in a code (encoding) so only people who are authorized can access it.
Let’s start with understanding what’s Public key encryption:
Public key encryption is a system in cryptography with only 2 keys – a public key, known to everyone and a private key known to the recipient of the message.
Boom! Can you imagine? We just shot 2 ducks with one bullet – while getting to know one term we also learned the other one.
Also there you go – the first difference.
So we can say we shot 3 ducks with one bullet?
The Big Bad Difference
These two, let’s say – things, called Public Key and Private Key have two different jobs, BUT they need each other to make a successful process of encryption. We could say that they are teammates with each individual position and responsibility.
The public key is needed to encrypt or send messages to people who have that public key and when they’ve received those messages, the private key comes into work.
The private key is needed for them to decrypt the messages you encrypted for them using the public key.
Basically, the difference – the public key is used for encrypting and the private key is for decrypting.
Also, another difference is that when you encrypt the message, you use the public key of the person you’re sending it to but when the other person wants to decrypt the message – he doesn’t have to use your private key. He has to use his own private key.
Now You Know
There you go. If you expected a long list of differences explained precisely like an instruction to build a rocket, then I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed you.
But what you got from this blog post is:
- That there are words like Public Key, Private key, and Encryption.
- Now you can define what’s encryption, public key, and private key and what they’re used for
- How they work
- The great difference between them that probably changed your life
- Hopefully, am interested to learn more about encryption.
And the last thing – I want you to remember this: “public key is used for encrypting and the private key is for decrypting.”
