ASCII

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a numerical coding scheme used to represent characters and symbols that can be entered and interpreted by computers. It is a seven-bit (8-bit extended) coded character set used to represent text in computers and other devices that can display text. ASCII was devised by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in the early 1960s.

The primary purpose of ASCII is to simplify the exchange of information between computers and other devices. It has since become the de facto standard for encoding and exchanging data, although other encoding schemes have become more popular and relevant over time.

Characters in the ASCII set are typically represented by 32 characters, including alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, and 0-9), common symbols such as the @ sign, punctuation marks, and control characters. Though commonly the extended 8-bit ASCII set is used to represent other symbols such as the Greek alphabet and typographic symbols. ASCII also includes codes that control mechanical functions such as printers, teletypewriters, and display devices.

In modern systems, the concept of character encoding has largely been replaced by Unicode, a coding standard that supports all languages and symbols. However, many system designers still rely on ASCII as a reliable and portable encoding scheme.

ASCII continues to be important in computing due to its use in programming, text processing, and data transfer over the internet. Much of the data exchanged over the internet is encoded using ASCII, and many of the systems used to access the internet such as modems and keyboards rely on ASCII.

The importance of ASCII to the world of cyber security lies in its use in encrypting sensitive data. Storing and transmitting data in an encrypted form is essential to overcome any cyber security attack. ASCII is used to encode data for secure transmission and can be combined with other types of encryption systems for added security.