While encryption is the process of taking all of the data that one computer is sending to another and encoding it into a form that only the other computer will be able to decode, authentication is the process of determining whether someone or something is, in fact, who or what it declares itself to be. Authentication technology provides access control for systems by checking to see if a user’s credentials match the credentials in a database of authorized users or in a data authentication server.

Read full article on Dzone