SSL shorts for Secure Sockets Layer, 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. 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. Digital certificates encrypt data using Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL) technology, the indu