Definition: Encrypting is a means of making data unreadable to anyone but the author of the data, or anyone who has the necessary password to open the data files.
Personal finance software data files may be encrypted for security. This encryption involves mathematically-based scrambling of the data in files so that it is unreadable except by authorized users.
Many personal software packages are capable of transferring transactions and account data over the Internet and this information must be encrypted while it is being transported over the Internet.
Pronunciation: en-cript
Examples: I used a password to encrypt the data in my Microsoft Money data files.
