Corporate espionage is big business these days. In a recent telephone survey (January 2010), Symantec contacted 2,100 businesses and government agencies in 27 countries and found that 100 percent of them had experienced cyber losses of some type in the past year. 75 percent of organizations said they were hit by a cyber attack in the past year and 36 percent of those rated the attacks as either "somewhat" or "highly effective."

Among the tools in your enterprise security arsenal are encryption systems, which can ensure that prying eyes can’t decipher anything garnered from intercepted messages or from stolen computers. Whether it is customer data, employee data, intellectual property, or confidential financial information, losing anything can be seriously detrimental. The Symantec study, for instance, revealed that, on average, companies and government agencies are spending an average of $2 million annually to combat cyber attacks.

In this helpful eBook, Internet.com contributors Paul Rubens and Drew Robb thoroughly cover the basics of encryption, including e-mail options and public key cryptography for enterprise users.