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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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just a single user sitting in front of a computer and typing. You’re accessing a

remote resource and sending login information over the Internet. What’s to

stop someone from intercepting your user name and password?

Firewalls do a great job of controlling traffic coming into a network from

the Internet and going out of a network to the Internet, but they do nothing to

stop interceptor hackers who monitor traffic on the public Internet looking for

vulnerabilities. Worse, once a packet is on the Internet itself, anyone with the

right equipment can intercept and inspect it. Inspected packets are a

cornucopia of passwords, account names, and other tidbits that hackers can

use to intrude into your network. Because we can’t stop hackers from

inspecting these packets, we must turn to encryption to make them

unreadable.

Network encryption occurs at many levels and is in no way limited to

Internet-based activities. Not only are there many levels of network

encryption, but each encryption level also provides multiple standards and

options, making encryption one of the most complicated of all networking

issues. You need to understand where encryption comes into play, what

options are available, and what you can use to protect your network.

Network Authentication

Have you ever considered the process that takes place each time a person

types in a user name and password to access a network, rather than just a

local machine? What happens when this network authentication is requested?

If you’re thinking that information is sent to a server of some sort to be

authenticated, you’re right—but do you know how the user name and

password get to the serving system? That’s where encryption becomes

important in authentication.

In a local network, authentication and encryption are usually handled by

the OS. In today’s increasingly interconnected and diverse networking

environment, there is a motivation to enable different operating systems to

authenticate any client system from any other OS. Modern operating systems

such as Windows and macOS use standard authentication encryptions such as

MIT’s Kerberos, enabling multiple brands of servers to authenticate multiple

brands of clients. These LAN authentication methods are usually transparent

and work quite nicely, even in mixed networks.

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