Encryption is the process of changing data into a form that can be read only by the intended receiver. To decipher the message, the receiver of the encrypted data must have the proper decryption key. In traditional encryption schemes, the sender and the receiver use the same key to encrypt and decrypt data. Public-key encryption schemes use two keys: a public key, which anyone may use, and a corresponding private key, which is possessed only by the person who created it. With this method, anyone may send a message encrypted with the owner's public key, but only the owner has the private key necessary to decrypt it. The 256 Bit tells users that the size of the encryption key used to encrypt the data being passed between a Web browser and Web server is 256 Bits in size. Because the size of the 256 Bit key is large it is computationally unfeasible to crack and hence is known as strong SSL security.
