How Does an SSL Certificate Work? What is an SSL Handshake?

SSL Certificate works on a TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) protocol to send data over the internet. SSL follows a handshake process that sets up a secure connection without disturbing customers’ shopping experience. The SSL handshake process is as under:

• After building a TCP connection, the client started the handshake with sending information like SSL version, cipher suites, and compression method.
• The server then checks for the highest SSL version that is supported by both of them.
• The server also chooses the compression method and the cipher suite from the client’s option.
• After this exchange, the server sends a certificate (public key) to the client.
• The client confirms the certificate, creates pre-master secret for the session, and encrypts the session with the server’s public key.
• The server receives pre-master secret and decrypt it with the private key.
• Both parties agree on a single cipher suite and generate the session keys (symmetric keys) to encrypt and decrypt the information during an SSL session.
• Finally, both client and server exchanges encrypted message to ensure that the future messages will be encrypted.

The SSL handshake builds a secure connection and customers or users of a website will have a safe environment for potential web transactions.