What Does SSL Stand For? A 10-Minute Look at the Secure Sockets Layer – Hashed Out by The SSL Store

Whats SSL? SSL, or secure sockets layer, is the standard technology used to secure online communications. Lets take a quick look at what SSL is and what it does to enable your secure transactions online

You know when you go to a website and see a padlock icon in your browsers address bar? That means the website is using SSL, or secure sockets layer. SSL secures your communication with the website so hackers cant eavesdrop and see your credit card number or password.

(Technically speaking, SSL is an outdated term because its been replaced by a very similar but updated technology known as transport layer security, or TLS. But people still like to use the term SSL because its been around longer and, therefore, is easier to remember.)

Today, were taking a step back from more in-depth technical articles to take a quick look at the basics: what does SSL stand for? What is SSL? How does it work? And, of course, how you can protect your own website with SSL.

Lets hash it out.

SSL stands for secure sockets layer. In the simplest terms, SSL is a technology thats commonly used to securely send data (for example credit cards or passwords) between a users computer and a website. The term also describes a specific type of digital certificate (SSL certificate) that companies use to prove they own their domain. (Well speak more about that a little later.)

SSL is a protocol (i.e., a set of rules computer systems follow when communicating with each other) that was created in the 1990s to allow web browsers to securely send sensitive info to/from a website. Nowadays, however, we rely on transport layer security (TLS) to handle these tasks, but the term SSL has stuck around and thats the term most people use. Well talk more about SSL certificates and TLS a little later in the article. But just note that since youll commonly see SSL or SSL/TLS being used interchangeably across the internet, were just going to use the term here as well to keep things simple.

If youre looking for quick rundown of what SSL is and why its important, check out our TL;DR overview section.

If you want to learn how to enable SSL/TLS on your website, just click on this link and well take you to that section of the article. But if youre interested in learning more about what SSL/TLS does and how you use it, then keep reading.

The answer to this question is easy: your browser will tell you, usually in at least two ways:

The good news is that more and more websites are using SSL to keep site visitors like you and me secure. W3Techs reports that HTTPS is the default protocol for 79.6% of all websites. This is up from around 75% back in September 2021. Nice looks were moving in the right direction.

Heres a quick visual comparison of a website thats transmitting via a secure HTTPS protocol (using SSL/TLS) versus one thats using the insecure HTTP protocol:

If the website is using HTTP, this means that any data sent from your browser to the server hosting the website risks the data being read, modified, or stolen in transit. As a website owner, its really bad news for you and your customers because it means their data is exposed and you may be liable for not securing it in the first place.

Now that you understand the basics of what SSL stands for and what it does, lets take a brief look under the hood. How exactly does SSL protect website users and data against hackers?

SSL protects data while its in transit (travelling between the users browser and the website/web server). There are actually three different things SSL does to protect website users. SSL enables secure authentication, data encryption, and data integrity assurance. This allows you to:

All of these things are made possible through a cryptographic process known as an SSL handshake (AKA TLS handshake). Much like how you introduce yourself to someone and shake their hand, your computer does the same with a websites server:

From there, some other technical steps take place that we arent going to get into right now. (Check out the previously linked article for a more in depth look at how different versions of the SSL/TLS handshake work.) Bada bing, bada boom the end result is that your browser and the website server establish a secure connection through which you can transmit sensitive data (such as using your credentials to log in to a website).

Pretty cool, huh?

Remember how we mentioned an SSL certificate is part of the SSL handshake? Yep, thats a mandatory step every website needs an SSL certificate before it can enable SSL/TLS. An SSL certificate is a digital file (issued to the website owner by a certificate authority such as DigiCert or Sectigo) that verifies them as the legitimate owner of the website.

Whats the point of that? To help you assert your digital identity in a way that other entities (users, browsers, operating systems, etc.) can verify youre legitimate and not an imposter. This way, when a user connects to your website, they know its legitimate and can establish a secure, encrypted connection.

Heres a quick example of what the SSL certificate looks like for TheSSLstore.com:

For those of you who like a little more technical knowledge about what SSL stands for: The term SSL refers to the technology (cryptographic protocol, or the instructions) that makes secure communications possible. However, people sometimes use the same term to also refer to a type of data file known as an SSL certificate (AKA a TLS certificate). This digital certificate is an X.509 file containing data that ties you or your organizations verifiable information to the domain.

As such, its also known as a website security certificate because this information (along with other key cryptographic info it contains) helps to increase the security of your websites connections.

Ever visited a website and you werent sure if it was legitimate or trustworthy? Knowing how to view the details in their SSL certificate can help you figure out what company is running the website, who they are, and whether theyre a legit entity. (After all, you dont want to share your personal and sensitive details with a potential cybercriminal!)

As you can see in the left part of the above image, this provides general information about what the certificate is used for and which entity it was issued to. The right half of the image is the Subject details, which provides additional verifiable information about our company. In this case, it provides the following information:

All of this information can easily be verified using official resources, such as the State of Floridas Division of Businesses website:

Of course, thats not all of the information that this type of digital certificate provides. It also informs you:

Now, lets really throw a wrench into things by talking more about this term we touched on earlier. TLS, or transport layer security, is a closely related internet protocol thats so closely related to SSL that its actually considered its official successor. However, there are some technical differences in how SSL and TLS work, but were not going to dive into all of that here.

What you need to know is that when youre on a website thats secure by SSL, its technically secured by TLS. Unfortunately, people often use the terms SSL and TLS interchangeably. This gets confusing because so many people and organizations ours included still tend to use the term SSL to describe both terms.

So, why do we still call it SSL? After all, its a deprecated security protocol that was replaced with TLS back in 1999 after multiple iterations (SSL 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0). Frankly, its most likely because people are slow to change. Theres a strange tendency to stick to the terms were familiar with, so its easier for people to just call it SSL instead of TLS. (I guess, to quote a common adage, if it aint broke, dont fix it.)

So, whether someone calls it SSL or TLS, unless theyre talking about it at a highly technical level, theyre generally referring to the same secure protocol that makes the padlock icon appear in your browser or the digital certificate file that plays a central role in making that occur.

Now that weve gotten all of that info out of the way, answering what does SSL stand for? you may be wondering how you can put SSL/TLS to use on your website. Good news: its really easy. Just follow these five steps to turn make your secure website reality:

Of course, once all of this is done, use an SSL/TLS checker tool to ensure that your certificate is properly installed and configured. This can help prevent surprise issues from coming your way.

Alright, that brings us to the end of this article, which we hope helped you better understand what SSL stands for. But if youve skipped ahead and are now just joining us for a quick overview, SSL (or, really, TLS) is a secure internet protocol that allows users to share their data securely with websites.

The three key processes that SSL facilitates are:

SSL, as a protocol, uses information provided by digital certificates that go by the same name (SSL certificates). Nowadays, these are technically TLS certificates, but hardly anyone actually bothers calling them that. (You know, because were all a tad lazy and its easier to call them what weve been calling them for years.). So, there you have it. Now you can show off your technical chops around the water cooler or during the next trivia night by being able to answer the question, What does SSL stand for?

Here is the original post:
What Does SSL Stand For? A 10-Minute Look at the Secure Sockets Layer - Hashed Out by The SSL Store