Encryption Technology: Mechanism used to render text and/or data unreadable by unauthorized parties. The basic idea is to use a mathematic algorithm to alter each character into another character. Without the proper keys to decrypt the data, an unauthorized user would see a string of gibberish. A simple example is to take each letter of the alphabet and assign it a number, 1 through 26 (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc.) By adding a fixed number, say 5, to each letter, the word "DOG" becomes "ITL".