When building an application that requires user authentication, one of the worst mistakes you can make is storing passwords in plain text.
Hashing is a one-way function that converts a password into a fixed-length, irreversible string, making it nearly impossible to reverse-engineer.
Salting adds a unique random value to each password before hashing, ensuring that even if two users have the same password, their hashes will be different.
Bcrypt is one of the best tools for hashing passwords, as it automatically includes salting and key stretching to enhance security.