If you expect your customers to provide you with confidential information such as credit card or social security numbers, you better make sure that they are protected from interception. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) are the leading protocols in secure data transmission. SSL is a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting private documents via the Internet. SSL works by using a private 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, Web pages that require an SSL connection start with https: instead of http:.
The other 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.
To learn more about SSL and S-HTTP check out:
Accepting Credit Card Payments
Secured Transmission (SSL, HTTPS)
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
