SSL

CIS341 Security Design in a Network Environment

Professor John Dormishian

Introduction
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is defined by Techtarget (2010) as a common employed protocol used for the management of security of information being transmitted over the internet. SSL has been recently succeeded by the Transport Layer Security (TLS), a protocol that is based on SSL. SSL operates on the program layer that is located between the Transport Control Layer (TCP) and then Hypertext Transfer Protocol. PCI (2008) referred to SSL as the established industry standard that is used in the encryption of the channel between a given web browser and an appropriate web server in order to ensure that there is privacy and reliability in the information that is being transmitted over the given channel.
SSL is basically included as part of the web browsers as well as Web servers. Patel (2008,p.223) indicated that the SSL protocol was originally developed by Netscape in order to ensure that the security of information that is being transmitted as well as routed via HTTP,POP3 or LDAP was assured. The protocol had since then been adopted by Microsoft as well as other client/server developers as the de facto standard prior to its evolution into Transport Layer Security (TLS).The “sockets” in the term is used to refer to the sockets method of data transmission to and from a client/server based program in a network or even between various program layers in a common, same computer. SSL employs public-and private key encryption system from the RSA and includes the application of a digital certificate.
How SSL works
According to Patel (2008,p.223), SSL is specially designed in order to employ TCP as its communication layer so as to provide a reliable, secure and authenticated end-to-end connection between two different points over a given network.
The Objectives of SSL