The document discusses encryption and decryption techniques. It introduces symmetric-key cryptography, where the sender and receiver share a single key, and public-key cryptography, which avoids the problem of secure key exchange. It then discusses the Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm, which transforms 64-bit blocks of data using a complex computation controlled by a 64-bit key. DES applies initial and final permutations to the data and uses a cipher function and key schedule for the encryption.