In Brief

• Encryption and decryption are supported in the .NET Framework using an extensible and configurable class library.

• Symmetric and asymmetric encryption and decryption are supported by the Base Class Libraries.

• To encrypt information, write it to an encrypting crypto stream. To decrypt information, read it from an decrypting crypto stream.

• Role-based security lets you leverage Windows groups to determine whether a user is authorized to perform a specific activity.

• Using attributes to enforce role-based security requires little or no coding, yet ensures that only authorized users can use the restricted parts of an application.