Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 15:07 CDT From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com> "Haywood J. Blowme" says: [Lots about some J. Random Companies encryption chip] All fine and well, but since we have IDEA already, why should we want it? For virtually all applicatons these days other than fully encrypting network traffic, software is fine. DES implementations in software can handle 1.5 Mbit/s on reasonable machines. Beyond that, if we need hardware, why not use one of the currently publically known algorithms like DES or IDEA, or a combination of them? Why use some other companies algorithm? Perry Even when using encryption software there may be reasons to use something other than DES. One possible reason (apart from doubts about whether NSA can break DES in one or more of its modes) is that, although the security and speed of an encryption algorithm is of central importance, the quality of the user-interface is also important. For example, if you want to encrypt/decrypt thirty files in five different subdirectories twice a day, and do it in an office with your colleagues looking over your shoulder, you won't want to be using software that encrypts only one file at a time and also displays the encryption key as you type it in (though you might like to have the key echoed when no-one else is about). There are lots of other things to be considered besides the algorithm itself when designing good encryption software, e.g. if someone accidentally yanks out the power cord to the computer during decryption do you kiss goodbye to the data? -- Peter Meyer