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(pronounced as separate letters) Short for
Secure Sockets Layer, a
protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting
private documents via the Internet. SSL works by
using a private key to encrypt data that's
transferred over the SSL connection. Both
Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer 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:.
Another
protocol for transmitting data securely over the
World Wide Web is Secure HTTP (S-HTTP).
Whereas SSL creates a secure connection between
a client and a server, over which any amount of
data can be sent securely, S-HTTP is designed to
transmit individual messages securely. SSL and
S-HTTP, therefore, can be seen as complementary
rather than competing technologies. Both
protocols have been approved by the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a standard.
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