| 1. An Internet protocol (originally developed by Netscape Communications, Inc.) that uses connection-oriented end-to-end encryption to provide data confidentiality service and data integrity service for traffic between a client (often a web browser) and a server, and that can optionally provide peer entity authentication between the client and the server.
(Source: RFC 2828)
2. Secure Sockets Layer is a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting private documents via the Internet. SSL works by using a public key to encrypt data that's transferred over the SSL connection. Most web browsers support SSL, and many web sites use the protocol to obtain confidential user information, such as credit card numbers. By convention, URLs that require an SSL connection start with “https:” instead of “http:”. TLS is an Internet standard based on SSL version 3.0. There are only very minor differences between SSL and TLS.
(Source: NIST SP 800-46) |