What is the difference between SSL and TLS?

What is the difference between SSL and TLS?

What is the difference between SSL and TLS? What type of usages we have for each protocol?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    By submitting your registration information to SearchNetworking.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchNetworking.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

SSL is Secure Sockets Layer and was originally developed by Netscape. It uses a private key to encrypt communication. TLS is Transport Layer Security. It comes from the IETF and has differences in cryptography that renders it incompatible with SSL. Both use TCP. For more detailed information check the following:

SSL 3.0 specification: http://wp.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/
TLS working group and RFC 2246: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/tls-charter.html

This was first published in September 2003