Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a computer networking protocol for securing connections between network application clients and servers over an insecure network, such as the internet. Due to numerous protocol and implementation flaws and vulnerabilities, SSL was deprecated for use on the internet by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2015 and has been replaced by the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. While TLS and SSL are not interoperable, TLS is backwards-compatible with SSL 3.0.

SSL was originally specified in the 1990s as a proprietary protocol that allowed Netscape browser clients using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to communicate securely with Netscape web servers. SSL eventually came to be used to secure authentication and encryption for communication at the network transport layer.

SSL uses a combination of public key and symmetric key encryption to secure a connection between two machines, typically a web or mail server and a client system, communicating over the internet or another TCP/IP network. SSL provides a mechanism for encrypting and authenticating data sent between processes running on a client and server.

SSL runs above the transport layer and the network layer, which are responsible for the transport of data between processes and the routing of network traffic over a network between client and server, respectively, and below application layer protocols such as HTTP and the Simple Mail Transport Protocol. The "sockets" part of the term refers to the sockets method of passing data between a client and a server program in a network or between processes in the same computer.

The TLS protocol evolved from SSL and has officially superseded it, although the terms SSL or SSL/TLS are still commonly used to refer to the protocol used to secure web/internet traffic. SSL/TLS is the most widely deployed security protocol used today and, according to Google, it is being used to secure more than 50% of the pages loaded by the Chrome browser. In addition to supporting the transmission of web pages, SSL has been implemented for applications including email, file transfer, instant messaging and voice over IP.