•The fear of impersonation or misappropriation of authenticated access discovered enroute, makes encryption a crucial part of identity protection. Encryption in modern times is achieved by using algorithms that have a key to encrypt and decrypt information. These keys convert the messages and data into "digital gibberish" through encryption and then return them to the original form through decryption. In general, the longer the key is, the more difficult it is to crack the code. This holds true because deciphering an encrypted message by brute force would require the attacker to try every possible key. To put this in context, each binary unit of information, or bit, has a value of 0 or 1. An 8-bit key would then have 256 or 2^8 possible keys. The 56-bit DES keys would have 2^56, or 72 quadrillion, possible keys to try and decipher a message. Before the introduction of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) by the US Government's NIST, information sent over the Internet, such as financial data, was encrypted (if at all), using the increasingly obsolete DES (US Gov't NBS) methods.  

•Beginning around 1990, the use of the Internet for commercial purposes and the introduction of commercial transactions over the Internet called for a widespread standard for encryption which resulted in AES's widespread adoption. The primary concern, was the appearance of Eve in the Bob and Alice archetype. This 3rd party eavesdropper, could see or modify the transmission arbitrarily and with this information assume either Bob or Alice's online identity. With Bruce Schneier's publication of Applied Cryptography in 1994 and 1996, many more personae Identities were created to clarify the math of Identity encryption and possible security breach and audit scenarios.