Click here for airport transfer informationSSL Explained
The SSL protocol ensures that data transferred between a client and a server remains private. It allows the client to authenticate the identity of the server.
SSL-enabled browsers like the Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft Explorer can communicate securely with the server using SSL. With SSL, you can easily establish a security-enabled Web site on the Internet or on your corporate TCP/IP network.
SSL uses a security handshake to initiate the TCP/IP connection between the client and the server. During the handshake, the client and server agree on the security keys that they will use for the session, and the client authenticates the server. After that, SSL is used to encrypt and decrypt all of the information in both the https request and the server response, including :
- The URL the client is requesting
- The contents of any form being submitted
- Access authorization information like user names and passwords
- All data sent between the client and the server.
HTTPS is a unique protocol that combines SSL and HTTP. You need to specify "https://" as an anchor in HTML documents that link to SSL-protected documents. A client user can also open a URL by specifying https:// to request an SSL-protected documents.
Because HTTPS (HTTP + SSL) and HTTP are different protocols and usually use different ports (443 and 80, respectively), you can run both secure and non-secure HTTP servers at the same time. As a result, you can choose to provide information to all users using no security, and specific information only to browsers who make secure requests. This is how a retail company on the Internet can allow users to look through the merchandise without security, but then fill out order forms and send their credit card numbers using security.
A browser that does not have support for HTTP over SSL will naturally not be able to request URLs using HTTPS. The non-SSL browsers will not allow submission of forms that need to be submitted securely.