While most of the important data, such as hole cards of other players and personal data, are maintained on the server side, encryption still remains an important aspect of online poker.

Encryption can be defined as the encoding of a message so that only the sender and intended receiver are able to read the contents. An encryption algorithm takes a key and uses its value to encode the message. The stronger the key the harder the message is to break.

• 128-bit encryption is the commonly accepted standard on the web. This form of encryption creates 2^128 possible keys. It may be stating the obvious, but that is quite a lot. Some use higher standards than this, but 128-bit is thought to be secure enough for the foreseeable future. The algorithm takes the key and encodes the message accordingly. When the message reaches the intended destination the decryption process decodes the message and makes it readable once again.
  
  Party Poker uses 128-bit encryption provided by Thawte for many of its transactions.


• 256-bit encryption as you may suspect works much like the 128-bit encryption except that it is even more difficult to break. In fact, it may even be overkill at this time for transactions like these - however, as they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
  
  Full Tilt Poker uses 256-bit encryption when possible. Not all customers' systems are capable of this. If 256-bit is not possible due to end-user restraints then it uses a minimum of 128-bit.