Asymmetric encryption is also known as public key encryption. It uses two different keys to encrypt messages, the public key and the private key. Symmetric is different because it uses only one key to encrypt and decrypt messages. Symmetric encryption is much faster for the computer to process, however it raises the costs of key management. Symmetric encryption, also called private key encryption, is where the same key is used to conduct both the encryption and decryption of the message. Both the sender and receiver must own encryption of the key. The problem with symmetric encryption is getting a copy of the key to the sender.