The Diffie–Hellman key exchange let two parties agree on a shared secret over an insecure channel — enabling TLSTransport Layer Security — encryption that protects data in transit on the web and networks., SSHSecure Shell — encrypted remote login, command execution, and file transfer over networks., and VPNVirtual private network — an encrypted tunnel over a public network. handshakes today. The paper also articulated the vision of public-key cryptography that RSARivest–Shamir–Adleman — a widely used public-key encryption algorithm named after its inventors. would fulfill a year later.

Diffie–Hellman introduced the public-key paradigm to academic cryptography.

Key exchange without pre-shared secrets became the basis of secure internet protocols.