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Kerberos Network Authentication Service

Kerberos is a computer network authentication service, which allows secure communications over an insecure network giving users the ability to prove their identity to one another securely. Kerberos was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT provides an open source implementation of this protocol.

Kerberos prevents eavesdropping or replay attacks, and assures the integrity of the data. It's primarily a client-server model. It provides authentication and strong cryptography to secure communications for both the client and the server across enterprise and public networks. This is done through the exchange of certificates between clients and servers.

Kerberos is built on symmetric key cryptography and requires trusted certificates. Certificates are available from third party certification authorities (CA) such as VeriSign.

After a client and server has used Kerberos to prove their identity, they can also encrypt all of their communications to assure privacy and data integrity.