Crypt(?)
Cryptology is one part of the much larger domain of (information) security . Think of the information security field as a pizza 😃 Then cryptology is just a slice of it. Cryptology evolved continuously in time: it started with techniques that only used pen and paper, went through the era of mechanic computation, and nowadays uses electronic computing at a large scale. Today, an active research direction is post-quantum cryptology , which considers quantum computation too. An interesting (but long!) well-known book about the history of cryptology is David Kahn's book The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet . Another newer, shorter book on cryptology for the large public is The Code Book by Simon Singh. As in any field, there are some (fundamental) notions you need to become familiar with from the beginning. First, there are the " crypt -" words, s...