Internet Information Services Administration

An Overview of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

Internet Information Services 5 provides a high-performance implementation of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 for secure communication and authentication with X.509 certificates, RSA Public Key Cipher, and a broad array of additional security features. SSL enables a client communicating with a server to negotiate security and authentication levels. When a session is initiated, SSL requires a symmetric session key and encryption algorithm to be negotiated. The symmetric key is used for encrypting and decrypting data. Authentication of the client/server might also be performed while the session is being established. When the negotiation is completed, the client and the server can transmit data to each ...