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HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the communication protocol of the World Wide Web. It is used to provide authentication and encrypted communication and is useful in electronic commerce.
Instead of using plain-text socket communication, HTTPS encrypts the session data using either a version of the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol or the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol, thus ensuring reasonable protection from eaves-droppers, and man in the middle attacks. The default TCP/IP port of HTTPS is 443.
The level of protection depends on the correctness of the implementation by the web browser and the server software and the actual cryptographic algorithms supported.
In web pages that use HTTPS, the URL begins with with 'https://' rather than 'http://'.