hypertext transmission protocol, secure

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

HyperText Transmission Protocol, Secure
HTTPS

   <protocol> (HTTPS) A variant of {HTTP} used by {Netscape} for
   handling secure transactions.

   The {Netscape Navigator} supports a {URL} {access method},
   "https", for connecting to {HTTP} {servers} using {SSL}.

   "https" is a unique protocol that is simply {SSL} underneath
   {HTTP}.  You need to use "https://" for HTTP {URLs} with
   SSL, whereas you continue to use "http://" for HTTP URLs
   without SSL.  The default "https" {port} number is 443, as
   assigned by the {Internet Assigned Numbers Authority}.

   (http://netscape.com/info/security-doc.html).

   (1995-01-16)