What is SSL?

Secure Sockets Layer is an application-level protocol which was developed by the Netscape Corporation for the purpose of transmitting sensitive information, such as Credit Card details, via the Internet. SSL works by using a private key to encrypt data transferred over the SSL-enabled connection, thus thwarting eavesdropping of the information. The most popular use of SSL is in conjunction with web browsing (using the HTTP protocol), but many network applications can benefit from using SSL. By convention, URLs that require an SSL connection start with https: instead of http:.