AI engineering glossary · Computing foundations
What is public-key cryptography?
Public-key cryptography (also called Asymmetric encryption): An approach to secure communication using a pair of related keys, one public and one private. What one key locks, only the other unlocks, which allows secure exchange and digital signatures without sharing a secret beforehand.
Public-key cryptography: an example
A website publishes its public key, and your browser uses it to set up a secure session that only the site's private key can complete.
Related terms
More Computing foundations terms
- Race condition
- Random access memory
- Reference counting
- Register
- Reverse proxy
- Round-trip time
- Router
- Scheduler
Where you learn it
Public-key cryptography is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.