What is PGP ?
PGP(®) uses public-key encryption to protect E-mail and data files. Communicate securely with people you've never met, with no secure channels needed for prior exchange of keys. PGP is well featured and fast, with sophisticated key management, digital signatures, data compression, and good ergonomic design.
Pretty Good(tm)
Privacy (PGP), from Phil's Pretty Good Software, is a high security cryptographic
software application for MS-DOS, Unix,
VAX/VMS, and other computers. PGP allows people to exchange files or messages
with privacy, authentication, and convenience. Privacy means that only those
intended to receive a message can read it. Authentication means that messages
that appear to be from a particular person can only have originated from that
person. Convenience means that privacy and authentication are provided without
the hassles of managing keys associated with conventional cryptographic software.
No secure channels are needed to exchange keys between users, which makes PGP
much easier to use. This is because PGP is based on a powerful new technology
called "public key" cryptography.
PGP combines the convenience of the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public key cryptosystem with the speed of conventional cryptography, message digests for digital signatures, data compression before encryption, good ergonomic design, and sophisticated key management. And PGP performs the public-key functions faster than most other software implementations. PGP is public key cryptography for the masses.