What does HTTPS mean? Definition and meaning explained

Meanwhile, there are countless websites - not all of these websites are trustworthy. The question "What does HTTPS mean?" plays an important role in the identification of trustworthiness or security. The HTTPS meaning is especially relevant in the context of improved protection against hackers - so it is particularly important today to be able to identify malicious pages in time.

But first we need to clarify: What does HTTPS mean? The HTTPS protocol ensures encrypted communication between the browser and the web server.

What does HTTPS mean? Ensuring secure data exchange

Users often ask, "What does HTTPS mean?", or "What is HTTPS?" HTTPS is short for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. Basically, HTTPS guarantees secure communication between the web browser and the server.

As soon as you want to access a website, the web browser sends a request to the server and the request is processed by the server. The server then sends a response to the web browser so that data can be exchanged. With HTTPS, secure communication can be guaranteed and data can be sent back and forth without problems.

However, if the transmission is not encrypted, theoretically any user can view this data. HTTPS ensures appropriate encryption, which enables secure data traffic. In the early days of the Internet, this encrypted communication did not exist, so the data traffic could be hacked quite easily. Nowadays, however, every trustworthy website has HTTPS.

When asking the question "What does HTTPS mean?" it is important to remember that HTTPS is not a substitute for a data-secure search engine - even pages with HTTPS are tracked, so the communication protocol alone does not guarantee anonymous surfing.

What does HTTPS mean and how does HTTPS work? Is HTTPS secure?

What does HTTPS mean? This question is relatively easy to answer based on the previous explanations. When it comes to the question of how HTTPS works, you have to go a bit further.

The web browser and the server work with a key that is known to them. In just three steps, the key is generated so that it can only be seen by the two parties. Data is sent to the web browser. However, the transmission takes place using asymmetric encryption.

Asymmetric encryption ensures that the transmission is encrypted, but the data cannot be decrypted. There is the possibility that the data can be viewed, but no one can do anything with this data. To get to the heart of the question "What does HTTPS mean?", you need to take a closer look at the second step.

The web browser is able to generate a secret symmetric key. The key and the data are now encrypted and sent to the server. However, the server is able to open the asymmetric encryption because it has the necessary information to do so.

The server can view the asymmetric encryption. After the encryption is complete, it can use the symmetric key of the web browser to read the transmitted data. Thus, communication over HTTPS can only take place because both parties have the symmetric key.

This clarifies the importance of HTTPS for surfing the Internet - although HTTPS alone does not guarantee privacy on the Internet, encrypted data transmission is an important part of it.

What does HTTPS and HTTP mean?

The question "What does HTTPS mean?" has already been answered. But what is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS? Technically, the two protocols are not really different from each other.

The difference between HTTP and HTTPS lies more in the type of transmission. Here the "S" makes the difference, which stands for "secure" - with HTTPS the data transmission is additionally secured. Since HTTPS uses SSL/TLS, the communication between the web browser and the server is particularly secure.

The web browser and server speak the same language, so to speak. However, only the two parties can understand this language. Whether a browser opens a web page directly without HTTPS depends on the security settings. Depending on which browser you use, you may even see warnings if a web page does not have HTTPS.

What does HTTPS mean for Internet security?

The importance of HTTPS is so great because hackers are also constantly resorting to new means to gain unauthorized access to user data. Protecting personal information on the Internet has never been so important. Accordingly, there are various ways to make browsing more secure these days. For example, a VPN can be used to surf anonymously.

Especially in freely accessible networks, it is important to attach importance to encrypted communication. Anyone who attaches great importance to their data and security on the Internet should not even visit a website without HTTPS.

Fortunately, websites without HTTPS are mostly blocked by web browsers, so Internet users today usually do not even run the risk of compromising their own security in the course of visiting such a site. However, the question "What does HTTPS mean?" is still relevant - because according to the Data Protection Regulation, it is mandatory that a website is on the cutting edge of security. HTTPS encryption should therefore be present in any case and offers Internet users a basic level of security. This should clarify the question "What does HTTPS mean? ".