India, Sept. 7 -- Whitfield Diffie has a wonderfully understated way of describing the idea that helped change computing.

Speaking to Dataquest on the sidelines of the global launch of Ziroh Labs' Kompact AI platform in Bengaluru, the cryptography pioneer looked back at the beginnings of public-key cryptography and the breakthrough that would eventually reshape digital trust.

"I've done one good hour of work in my life and been making a living off of it for 50 years," he says, smiling as he reflects on that period.

That "one good hour" came roughly half a century ago. Diffie had been wrestling with two apparently different problems. One was the problem of secure communication between people who had never exchanged a secret key. The oth...