In this paper we propose a general definition of secrecy for cryptographic protocols in the Dolev-Yao model. We give a sufficient condition ensuring secrecy for protocols where rules have encryption depth at most two, that is satisfied by almost all practical protocols. The only allowed primitives in the class of protocols we consider are pairing and encryption with atomic keys. Moreover, we describe an algorithm of practical interest which transforms a cryptographic protocol into a secure one from the point of view of secrecy, without changing its original goal with respect to secrecy of nonces and keys, provided the protocol satisfies some conditions. These conditions are not very restrictive and are satisfied for most practical protocols.