HTTPS – security over HTTP

While we'll discuss it more in Chapter 13, Transport Layer Security, we should take a moment to consider how to establish secure connections at the application layer. In the HTTP protocol, security is achieved through Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). This provides a mechanism for authenticating the source of a remote resource, such as a web page or an API response. HTTPS also provides protection of the data in transit that is passed between client and server with each request/response interaction. This is done by leveraging the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or, more recently, the Transport Layer Security (TLS) on the underlying transport-layer interactions.

Establishing outbound HTTPS connections

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