Security: Encryption

When you can't restrict access to your files, you can still protect their confidentiality by encrypting them. You can use encryption to secure communications paths, such as secure web pages accessed with the https: protocol. VPNs also typically use encrypted communications.

In general, although encryption can prevent a message from being read, it doesn't, by itself, guarantee the authenticity of a message (for example, that it originated from the apparent author).

But by using tools like GNU Privacy Guard (GPG), a digital signature can be used when encrypting an email or file, which will definitively associate the encrypted document with the person who encrypted and signed it (using his or her private key) and the time that it was signed. The public key of the signer can be used to decrypt the information.

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• Red Hat® Certificate System: A complete platform for deploying and maintaining a public key infrastructure (PKI) for managing encryption and strong authentication.