In "The Art of War", Sun Tzu states "The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable".

I have seen this quote used many times in reference to the field of cryptography, cryptanalysis and system security and have always thought it to be very appropriate.

Over the past 20 years we have progressed to a world in which an average person with a PC and a broadband connection can live his whole life without ever leaving the house. We have online banking, online shopping, E-Mail, video conferencing, real-time chat, entertainment, and telecommuting. Now some people might argue that this is not progress on a social level, but in terms of technical advancement it is astounding.

Cryptography and System Security play a major role in all of these services. Without being able to communicate securely we would never even consider sending our bank details over public networks, thereby making Internet banking and shopping impossible. We would not be able to have secure conversations with friends and family, we would not be able to conduct business over public networks securely and without the worry of our ideas or work being stolen.

As well as this we have the area of cryptanalysis. Although most people will use cryptography for innocent communication there will be always be someone who uses it to cover illegal acts. This is one reason why there is a lot of study related to breaking the security of the encryption algorithms we use. Not only to guarantee their effectiveness for normal users, but also so that law enforcement agencies can still monitor those people who are believed to be using cryptography to conceal their illegal acts.

However we look at it cryptography, cryptanalysis, and network security form a major part in the way we communicate over the Internet and other networks. Hopefully this site will both educate the average visitor of the need for these technologies, and how they work, but also have some more advanced information for those wishing to design, implement and manage these systems.