Originally developed by Netscape Communications to allow secure access of a browser to a Web server, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) has become the accepted standard for Web security.1 The first version of SSL was never released because of problems regarding protection of credit card transactions on the Web. In 1994, Netscape created SSLv2, which made it possible to keep credit card numbers confidential and also authenticate the Web server with the use of encryption and digital certificates. In 1995, Netscape strengthened the cryptographic algorithms and resolved many of the security problems in SSLv2 with the release of SSLv3. SSLv3 now supports more security algorithms than SSLv2.
