TLS (Transport Layer Security) Protocol

What is TLS (Transport Layer Security) Protocol?

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol, which ensures the data integrity between the client and server applications over the Internet. When a server and client communicates with each other, TLS ensures that no third party may eavesdrop or tamper with any message. TLS is a successor to the Secure Sockets Layer protocol or SSL and provides the Secure Communication over the Internet.

It is good idea to keep in mind that TLS resides on the Application Layer of the OSI model. This will save you a lot of frustrations while debugging and troubleshooting encryption problems related to TLS.

The TLS is composed or made of two layers:

1. The TLS Record Protocol: This is one of the top reliable transport protocol, such as TCP(Transmission Control Protocol) and provides connection security with some encryption method such as the Data Encryption Standard (DES). The TLS Record Protocol can also be used without encryption.

2. The TLS Handshake Protocol: Allows the server and client to authenticate each other and to negotiate an encryption algorithm and cryptographic keys before data is exchanged.