Summary

This goal of this chapter was to show you how to protect your data and protect communications between applications using security. You saw the symmetric algorithms that use a secret key to encrypt and decrypt data. You saw asymmetric algorithms that use public-private key pairs to produce complex, secure, encrypted data. In addition, you looked at creating hashes and took a whirlwind tour of the Windows Data Protection API (DPAPI).

After having read this chapter, you should be confident in your own ability to protect your application's data and protect information sent to and from your application using various methods. You should also feel fairly comfortable with the different concepts that are critical to encryption, such as key pairs, hashes, symmetric and asymmetric algorithms, and DPAPI.