Designers, developers, students, and committed users are finding encryption to be the essential element of security systems for computers and networks. In this comprehensive text Dent and Mitchell (both information security, Royal Holloway, U. of London) describe current standards and the standardization process at the national and industrial levels, security mechanisms and services, and the basics of encryption. They examine modes of operation for block ciphers, cryptographic hash functions, message authentication codes and protocols, digital signatures, non-repudiation mechanisms, key management frameworks, key establishment mechanisms, public key infrastructures, trusted third parties, cryptographic application program interfaces, and other standards such as random bit generation and biometric techniques. They close by forecasting the standards of the future and offer tables of standards as the appendix. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Read Less