Transport Layer Security

Transport Layer Security, or TLS, is a cryptographic protocol that encrypts data sent between a client and a server over a computer network, protecting it from being read or altered while in transit. Netscape Communications developed the protocol's predecessor, the Secure Sockets Layer, in the mid-1990s, with cryptographer Taher Elgamal contributing to its design, and the Internet Engineering Task Force standardized the successor protocol as TLS in 1999. TLS underlies the padlock icon and the https prefix shown in a web browser, and now secures the great majority of traffic carried across the World Wide Web.