A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for pricing a
cryptographic service. A request for a cryptographic service is received.
An identification is made of one or more of a computational burden
required to perform the cryptographic service, a privacy level of the
cryptographic service, and/or a speed of performing the cryptographic
service. A price of the cryptographic service is determined based on the
computational burden, privacy level, and/or speed. A method is also
provided for pricing a cryptographic service based on a compactness of a
cryptographic message. A request for encrypting a message is received.
The message is encrypted and is also compressed during the encryption. An
amount of compression of the message is determined. A price of the
encryption is determined based on the amount of compression.