Transport Layer Security (TLS), the successor to the widely-used Secure Sockets Layer, has been developed by Cisco to give greater communications security over an intranet network. The primary function of TLS is to encrypt data that is sent across the network, authenticating the sender's identity and preventing unauthorized access. To accomplish this, a digital certificate is created that must be downloaded and stored on each client's computer before sending the message. When a user requests a message, the server digitally signs the message with a secret key known as a digital fingerprint. This digital fingerprint ensures that only authorized parties will have the ability to decrypt the message, thus ensuring the integrity of the network.
One of the primary benefits of using this is that it improves the security of network traffic by requiring that all messages are encrypted before being transmitted. Encrypted messages are much harder for hackers to decipher, making the transmission of confidential information much more difficult and delaying the possible exposure of sensitive information to malicious users. Furthermore, because the protocol is scalable, companies that use it can create customized secure networks that are not based on any specific standard. Standardization of the transport layer security enables standard implementation that will provide the greatest degree of security possible to a given network environment. Standards also help to reduce the cost of deployment by standardizing the protocols that organizations wish to utilize.