DevOps Dictionary

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) began as an early web standard from Netscape to keep online sessions private, and today people still say “SSL” even though the modern protocol is actually TLS. In practice, SSL/TLS means that when your browser talks to a site, the data is scrambled before it leaves and only the site and your browser can turn it back into something readable. With SSL/TLS, passwords, tokens, and personal details move as encrypted data that is very hard for attackers on the network path to understand or change; without it, the same information travels in plain text, which lets anyone who can watch the traffic see or alter it. This gap exists because encryption uses shared secrets (keys) and math to lock the data so that only the intended endpoints, which hold the right keys, can unlock it.