Quality of Protection and Ciphers
The quality of protection determines the level of security that is used when sending and receiving messages. Microsoft Digest selects a level based on the requirements of the client and server.
When using Digest as a SASL mechanism, applications can specify that messages be kept confidential using encryption. The server specifies the ciphers it supports for encrypted messages, and the client selects a cipher from this list.
The following topics discuss these security mechanisms in detail: