Cryptography (commonly referred to as crypto) is, in part, the process of scrambling data that is both generally accessible and readable into a form that is both generally inaccessible and unreadable; it is also the process of unscrambling data that has previously been scrambled so it is generally accessible and readable, again. The process of scrambling readable data into an unreadable form is known as encryption. The process of unscrambling previously scrambled data so that it is, again, readable is known as decryption.
There are many techniques for scrambling and unscrambling data, but they largely derive from a few basic types. This chapter describes the basic types of cryptography and explains how they are supported in OpenEdge.
