The main drawback to asymmetric encryption is speed. Asymmetric encryption is much (thousands of times) slower than symmetric encryption. Thus, asymmetric encryption is too show to be used to exchange large amounts of data over the Internet. Consequently, e-business uses both types of encryption systems. Symmetric encryption is used to encode most of the data being exchanged. Asymmetric encryption is used to safely send the symmetric key to the recipient for use in decrypting the ciphertext. As discussed later, asymmetric encryption is also used in combination with a process called hashing to create digital signatures