Last Thursday when I was sitting around the Thanksgiving table with my friends and family, (and they asked me what my new job was about), I was surprised to find out that many of them didn’t know the word encryption – but they all knew what it was – and many of them had seen encryption in the movies.

First: What is Encryption?

Encryption is the mathematical process (or algorithm) of taking data and modifying it so it becomes unreadable. Decryption is the process of taking the unreadable encrypted data and running it through an algorithm that returns it to readable form.

Often encrypted data or encryption keys (passwords) will be called “code” but I don’t like to use that word because it’s vague, and has many other meanings in the computer world.

Ok, so now that we know what encryption is, (and here’s the fun part), here are some great movies that feature encryption, and may jog your memory a little more:

Sneakers (with Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Dan Akroyd and River Phoenix) is a movie featuring a universal encryption cracker – and the people who steal it. Obviously a box that can crack any “code” is mathematically impossible, but without it there would be no plot… and that would have been a shame cause

Sneakers was a terrific usual-suspects-esq movie.

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