Kerberos is a network authentication protocol developed at MIT in the 1980s. It uses secret key cryptography to authenticate users and services on an open network. When a user wants to access a service, Kerberos issues the user a ticket-granting ticket after verifying their credentials with the authentication server. The user can then use this ticket to request a ticket from the ticket granting server to access the specific service. This process prevents passwords from being sent across the network in plain text. Kerberos provides strong authentication but has the weakness that compromising the central server compromises authentication for all users.