ECC

Public-key cryptography offering strong security with smaller keys.

ECC is asymmetric cryptography built on the mathematics of elliptic curves, achieving strength comparable to RSA while using far smaller keys. The smaller key size means lower computation, memory, and power cost, which makes it especially valuable for mobile devices, smart cards, and constrained IoT hardware. It underpins related algorithms such as ECDHE for key exchange and ECDSA for signatures. The exam point is the efficiency advantage over RSA, where a roughly 256 bit ECC key offers security similar to a 3072 bit RSA key.