Re: Term usage - encrypted vs. "en clair"

["Elna Tymes" <etymes -at- lts -dot- com>]

"Leslie Johnson (Wasser)" wrote:

>  I'm in the process of sanitizing a document (written by a manager) for
> external audience use,
> and came across the terms encrypted vs. en clair. (As in "The network login
> password is encrypted, but the user name is en clair.") I've heard the term
> "en clair" used in this context before in conversation, but I've never run
> across it in a documentation context before. Does anyone have a suggestion for
> a better/more standard term than en clair?

What you're seeing is the literal transcription of engineering slang "in
clear."  What it's trying to do is distinguish between the way that, for
instance, a password is transmitted.  If the password is transmitted encrypted,
supposedly a hacker could not figure out the password unless he had the key.  If
the password is transmitted "in clear," the password is transmitted as it was
entered, meaning that a hacker could copy the password.

In my experience, clients and users prefer that you use standard English to
describe an operation like this, rather than the engineering slang.  You might
get away with something like "in clear text," however.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems


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