Phil Goldstein is a former web editor of the CDW family of tech magazines and a veteran technology journalist. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their animals: a dog named Brenna, and ...

COMMENTARY--I can imagine a world where the computers needed no security. Where there were no passwords, no security checks, and no firewalls. Where the computers communicated freely and shared ...

Over the past several months, we've seen major breaches exposing numerous usernames and passwords. The eBay and Adobe breaches impacted millions of accounts. Snapchat was compromised. With every ...

Before we move into the meat of this article, let’s define a couple terms related to cryptography. The syllable crypt may make you think of tombs, but it comes from a Greek word that means “hidden” or ...

Time and time again we hear about big companies (*cough*eBay*cough*) having serious security breaches, which result in users’ private information being exposed. When a company says it has suffered an ...

This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites. I ...

The whole concept of encryption once intimidated me with all those technical terms flying around. But after diving in and actually trying it myself, I discovered that encryption is surprisingly simple ...