Pretty Good Privacy

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Pretty Good Privacy Mean?

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a methodology used for encrypting and decrypting digital files and communications over the Internet. It was released with the BassOmatic symmetric key algorithm but later replaced by the International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) to circumvent certain BassOmatic flaws.

Advertisements

Techopedia Explains Pretty Good Privacy

Created by Phil Zimmerman in 1991, PGP was initially designed for email security. PGP works on the public key cryptography mechanism, where users encrypt and decrypt data using their respective public and private keys. PGP uses a symmetric encryption key to encrypt messages, and a public key is used with each sent and received message. First, the receiver must use its private key to decrypt the key and then decrypt the message through the decrypted symmetric key.

PGP also provides data/file integrity services by digitally signing messages, allowing receivers to learn whether or not message confidentiality is compromised.

PGP is also used to encrypt files stored on a computer and/or complete hard disk drives.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.