{"id":7753,"date":"2020-10-15T12:55:10","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T12:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rax-stg-wp-aws.com\/blogs\/the-ssl-and-tls-handshake-process\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T19:29:01","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T19:29:01","slug":"the-ssl-and-tls-handshake-process","status":"publish","type":"blogs","link":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/blogs\/the-ssl-and-tls-handshake-process\/","title":{"rendered":"The SSL and TLS handshake process"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post introduces Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, how these protocols work, and why you might use them.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 Secure Sockets Layer<\/strong><\/p>\n

The SSL handshake layer provides data integrity and privacy for communication between a client and a server. The server and client exchange the necessary information to establish secure communication during a handshake.<\/p>\n

Types of SSL handshakes<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are two types of SSL handshakes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

– One-Way SSL<\/strong>: With this handshake, only the client validates the server’s identity. Whenever you browse HyperText Transport Protocol Secure (HTTPS) URLs, you’re using one-way SSL. The browser (client) validates the identity of the website (server).<\/p>\n

– Two-Way SSL (Mutual SSL)<\/strong>: In this case, the client and server can validate each other’s identity. Two-way SSL is mostly used in server-to-server communication where both ends need to validate each other’s identity.<\/p>\n

SSL versions<\/strong>: Netscape developed SSL in 1994. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) picked up the protocol and standardized it as a protocol. SSL 3.0 is the current SSL version in use.<\/p>\n

SSL versions include the following ones:<\/p>\n