Introduction:
Transport Layer Security (TLS).
TLS is a successor to Secure Sockets Layer protocol. TLS provides secure communications on the Internet for such things as e-mail, Internet faxing, and other data transfers. There are slight differences between SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0, but the protocol remains substantially the same. It is good idea to keep in mind that TLS resides on the Application Layer of the OSI model. This will save you a lot of frustrations while debugging and troubleshooting encryption problems related to TLS.
TLS Handshake:
The TLS Handshake Protocol allows the server and client to authenticate each other and to negotiate an encryption algorithm and cryptographic keys before data is exchanged. In a typical scenario, only the server is authenticated and its identity is ensured while the client remains unauthenticated. The mutual authentication of the servers requires public key deployment to clients. When a server and client communicate, TLS protocol ensures that no third party may eavesdrop, tamper with any message, and message forgery. A TLS message may span multiple TLS records.
RFCs:
RFC2246 TLS 1.0 - (formerly known as Secure Socket Layer - SSL)
RFC4346 TLS 1.1
