transport layer security (TLS)

An authentication and security protocol widely implemented in browsers and web servers. TLS is based on the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 protocol. It uses digital certificates to authenticate both the user and the network. The TLS client uses the public key from the server to encrypt a random number and send it back to the server. The random number, combined with additional random numbers previously sent to each other, is used to generate a secret session key to encrypt the subsequent message exchange.