Scott Nevil is an experienced writer and editor with a demonstrated history of publishing content for Investopedia. He goes in-depth to create informative and actionable content around monetary policy ...

Hashing is a one-way cryptographic function while encryption is designed to work both ways. Encryption algorithms take input and a secret key and generate a random looking output called a ciphertext.

Imagine taking a block of data and turning it into a unique string of characters. Like giving it a digital nickname that never changes (unless the data does!). That’s a hash. Whether the original data ...