Secure Sockets Layer
A protocol for establishing a secure connection for transmission that facilitates much of the online commerce that occurs on the Internet today. For example, HTTPS, a secure form of HTTP, is an SSL application used in password exchanges or e-commerce. “The primary goal of the SSL protocol is to provide privacy and reliability between two communicating applications.” The protocol has three main properties: (1) The connection is private; (2) the peer’s identity can be authenticated using asymmetric, or public key, cryptography, and (3) the connection is reliable.
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