Cryptographic algorithms - Successes, failures and challenges

The exponential progress of hardware during the past decades and the explosion of wired and wireless networks has resulted in a large scale deployment of cryptography in financial applications and electronic commerce, in mobile phones and in electronic identity cards. In parallel with his deployment the insight has grown that building Secure information systems is a very hard problem: cryptography is all essential building block that may have helped LIS to Will some battles, but one still has the impression that we are losing the information Security "war." This article clarifies the role of cryptology in information security. Subsequently it discusses the challenges that are faced by this discipline. There is a strong need for algorithms that offer better trade-offs between performance, cost and security. In addition we face challenges related to Secure implementations in software and hardware and in the area of algorithm agility. We will Conclude with a brief discussion of opportunities offered by the progress made in the area of cryptographic protocols.