"Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the backbone of e-commerce on the web. It is the protocol used to encrypt communications between a web browser and web server, though it can also be used for other applications. To use SSL on your own web server, you often need to deal with an external company called a certificate authority (CA). Three major considerations come into play when choosing a CA: trust, audience, and cost.
"SSL was created by Netscape to enable secure e-commerce and rapidly became a defacto standard. SSL uses public key encryption methods to verify the authenticity of a server or client and encrypt communications between them..."
