Abstract
Information security is a vast domain but most people in the software industry prefer an appreciation of this topic rather than in-depth understanding. Information security can be split into two areas and one of these areas is network security. This paper focuses on concepts in network security, the need for network security and the techniques used to address it. This paper also covers the three important security services – confidentiality, authentication (including message integrity) and non-repudiation. Encryption (both conventional and public key) and hash functions are the building blocks for these security services. Understanding the building blocks and how they are used to provide security services is a prerequisite to understanding applications like PGP, Kerberos, IPSec etc.

Author Sivaram S

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