CryptoAPI and Cryptographic Service Providers

When the folks at Microsoft decided how they were going to build this cryptographic functionality into the operating system, they chose to make it very flexible and expandable. They realized that different applications would need different types and strengths of encryption. They also knew that new types of encryption would be released on a regular basis.

The question was how to make the API able to continuously expand and adapt as the state of the art for encryption changes, while not requiring constant changing and updating of all the applications that use the API. Microsoft's solution to this question was to make the API a front end that applications could use and call, while the back end was an ...

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