The TLS or Transport protocol is one of the types of coding protocols. This protocol is responsible for establishing a secure connection between the server and the client on the network platform. The words that make up the name of this protocol mean transfer, layer, and security. These words refer to the software part, which is responsible for establishing the security of information exchange in the network. Read on if you are interested in knowing what the TLS protocol is and how it works.
What is the TLS protocol?
TLS is a security protocol based on the SSL protocol. This protocol was first introduced in 1999 based on the third version of SSL and was able to become a viable alternative to it. In other words, TLS is an improved version of the SSL protocol that, although very slightly different from SSL, remains largely the same. This protocol uses the security of information exchange on the Internet to work with web pages, e-mail, and so on.
Differences between SSL and TLS protocols
The encryption method of this protocol is quite similar to the SSL protocol, and in general, it is not much different from it. Of course, TLS uses a more powerful encryption algorithm than the SSL protocol. Another difference between the SSL protocol and the TLS ports used in each. But the most important difference between TLS and SSL protocols is that TLS is more secure and efficient than SSL in creating the public key and message authentication. Accordingly, TLS is usually recommended to secure communications on the network.
Information encryption method by TLS protocol
Communicating via TLS requires prerequisites such as asymmetric keys (including a public key and private key) and a session key. As its name implies, the public key is readable by third parties. But the private key can only be used by the sender and recipient of the information.
This protocol can also use a combination of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. In the symmetric encryption algorithm, the encryption and decryption keys are the same, but these keys are different in the asymmetric encryption algorithm. Asymmetric keys are located on the server, but the server and client create the session key to communicate TLS. The session key made by the client and the server is the same, or in other words, better symmetric. After a secure connection is established, the data is encrypted by two public keys (A public key) and a private key (A private key). The communication process in this method is as follows:
- The server sends a copy of its public key to the client (user’s browser).
- The client encrypts the created session key using the received public key and sends it to the server.
- The server uses its private key to decrypt the received information to access the session key.
- Finally, the server and the client encrypt and decrypt information using the session key. This process creates a secure communication path between the client and the server. Because only these two know the session key, this key was created only for this connection. These steps must be repeated whenever the connection between the server and the client is lost.
Conclusion
As you can see, the TLS protocol is a security protocol developed to provide security between the server and the client. The performance of this protocol is very similar to the SSL protocol, but TLS can be considered in terms of the performance of the upgraded version of the SSL protocol. This protocol uses the security of information exchange on the network for purposes such as working with web pages, e-mail, etc.