Not all information is made for all eyes.

As such, cryptography was made to hide and obscure digital information to prevent prying eyes.

To do so, plain-text information (words, letters, and characters that are easily readable by the human eye) are shifted and transformed into indiscernible and seemingly random characters much like a secret code.

This is done by a “cipher key”, a piece of information that dictates how that information is scrambled. Think of it as being locked behind a vault that only someone with a key can open.

A key can be of varying sizes and, as time goes, will require larger and larger keys for greater security.

At the moment, the Nation Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recommended key sizes for different algorithms such as a minimum key size of 2048 bits for the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) public-key cryptosystem which is one of the more widely used systems for secure data transmission.