Understanding SSL

SSL is a protocol developed by Netscape that defines an interface for data encryption between network nodes. To establish an SSL-encrypted connection, the nodes must complete the SSL handshake. These are the simplified steps of the SSL handshake:

  1. Client sends a request to connect.

  2. Server responds to the connect request and sends a signed certificate.

  3. Client verifies that the certificate signer is in its acceptable certificate authority (CA) list.

  4. Client generates a session key to be used for encryption and sends it to the server encrypted with the server’s public key (from the certificate received in Step 2).

  5. Server uses its private key to decrypt the client generated session key.

Establishing an SSL connection requires two certificates: one containing the public key of the server (server certificate or public key certificate) and another to verify the CA that issued the server certificate (trusted root certificate). The server needs to be configured to issue the server certificate when a client requests an SSL connection, and the client needs to be configured with the trusted root certificate of the CA that issued the server certificate.

The nature of those configurations depends on both the protocol being used and the client and server platforms. In most cases, you replace HTTP with LDAP. SSL is a lower level protocol than the application protocol, such as HTTP or LDAP. SSL works the same regardless of the application protocol. To connect to a directory server over LDAPS from a PeopleSoft application, SSL has to be configured in the directory server and PeopleSoft application.

Note:

Establishing LDAPS is not related to web server certificates or certificates used with PeopleSoft integration.