Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) Practice Exam

The development of public key cryptography primarily aimed to address key distribution problems associated with traditional symmetric key cryptography. In symmetric cryptography, both the sender and receiver must share the same secret key to secure their communications. This necessitates a secure method of exchanging the key, which can be challenging and poses a security risk, especially if the key is intercepted during transmission.

Public key cryptography revolutionized this by introducing a pair of keys: a public key, which can be shared openly, and a private key, which is kept secret by the owner. This system allows anyone to encrypt a message using the recipient's public key without needing to share a secret key beforehand. Only the recipient, with their private key, can decrypt the message. This significantly solves the key distribution problem, as the need to safely share a private key is eliminated.

While the other choices may touch on different aspects of cryptography, they do not accurately reflect the primary motivation behind the introduction of public key cryptography. For instance, enhancing encryption speed is not a key focus of this cryptographic method, which can actually be slower than symmetric encryption. Similarly, while public key cryptography can simplify certain aspects of key management, simplifying encryption methods was not its primary goal. Finally, public