Every organization, regardless of size, industry or infrastructure, requires a degree of network security solutions in place to protect it from the ever-growing landscape of cyber threats in the wild today. Network security is a comprehensive aspect that shelters a multitude of technologies, devices and processes involved in computer networks.With the advent of Internet and world wide web our interconnected computers are prone to threats and attacks through the system vulnerabilities and this in turn can hamper the activities of an organization or even an individual. In its simplest term, network security comprises a set of rules and configurations designed to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer networks and data using both software and hardware technologies.

There are several reasons to learn network security and cryptography.

In our everyday lives, cryptography is used extensively and is ubiquitous. Say for example, we may use it to securely shoot passwords over massive networks for online shopping. It is used in financial transaction in banks where Bank servers and e-mail clients save your passwords using cryptography. Cryptography is used to secure all transmitted information in our IoT-connected world, to authenticate people and devices, and devices to other devices.

In this course I will take you through a tour of various cryptographic techniques.

There are basically 2 types of cryptographic systems. Symmetric key cryptosystem and asymmetric key cryptosystem. In symmetric key cryptosystem there is a single key used for encryption as well as decryption. In asymmetric key cryptosystem, there is a pair of keys- one used for encryption and the other for decryption. Encryption is the process of converting the plaintext or original message to ciphertext or coded message whereas decryption converts the ciphertext back to plaintext. So, encryption is used at the sender side whereas decryption is used at the receiver side. Towards the end of the course some complex research related cryptographic topics have been discussed that will be beneficial to the researchers and advanced learners.