Encryption is a means of protecting transmitted data from being read by anyone but the intended recipient.

The process of encryption involves transformation of data from it's human-readable form to a sequence of characters that appears (to the human eye) to be random (or pseudo random) sequence of gibberish data.

Any data so encrypted can only be decoded by the receiver. Usually a complex mathematical algorithm is used to carry out the above described transformation/encryption.

Some of the commonly used data encryption methods/standards are listed below. It is important to note that some of these encryption methods may already have been compromised:

• Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP): WEP protocol uses the RC4 algorithm to encrypt data. Considering that WEP has already been compromised, use of WEP for data encryption is considered unacceptable on most WLAN that deal with sensitive data. WEP is deemed unacceptable on most US government wireless networks as well.
  
  

• Federal Information Processing Standard, FIPS 140-2: US government publication FIPS 140-2 establishes security requirements for cryptographic modules that can be allowed/used for the processing of sensitive data. FIPS 140-2 is recognized by all government agencies that wish to procure equipment that contains validated cryptographic modules. All encryption methods to be used on US government WLANs must be FIPS 140-2 compliant.
  
  

• 3DES: 3DES is an encryption method that has been around for a while. It produces an unbreakable encrypted data-stream.
  
  

• Advanced Encryption Standard (AES): AES is now considered to be a replacement for 3DES. AES uses symmetric block cipher to data encryption and data decryption. AES supports several key sizes such as the key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bits.
  
  

• Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP): EAP is widely used in 802.1x based devices. It authenticates the users via a third party authentication server.