After two decades of research and development elliptic curve cryptography now has widespread exposure and acceptance. Industry banking and government standards are in place to facilitate extensive deployment of this efficient public-key mechanism. Anchored by a comprehensive treatment of the practical aspects of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) this guide explains the basic mathematics describes state-of-the-art implementation methods and presents standardized protocols for public-key encryption digital signatures and key establishment. In addition the book addresses some issues that arise in software and hardware implementation as well as side-channel attacks and countermeasures. Readers receive the theoretical fundamentals as an underpinning for a wealth of practical and accessible knowledge about efficient application. Features & Benefits: * Breadth of coverage and unified integrated approach to elliptic curve cryptosystems * Describes important industry and government protocols such as the FIPS 186-2 standard from the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology * Provides full exposition on techniques for efficiently implementing finite-field and elliptic curve arithmetic * Distills complex mathematics and algorithms for easy understanding * Includes useful literature references a list of algorithms and appendices on sample parameters ECC standards and software tools This comprehensive highly focused reference is a useful and indispensable resource for practitioners professionals or researchers in computer science computer engineering network design and network data security.