Imagine that you want to send a confidential letter to a friend through the mail. To protect the confidentiality of the letter, you decide to use a secure mailing service that encrypts the letter and verifies the identity of the recipient.
Here is how the secure mailing service (HTTPS) would work, using mail as an analogy:
- You write the letter and place it in a secure envelope. The letter represents the data that you want to send over the internet.
- You take the envelope to the secure mailing service and request that they send it to your friend. The secure mailing service represents the website that you want to access.
- The secure mailing service checks the address on the envelope and verifies that it matches the address of your friend. This is similar to how HTTPS verifies the identity of the website using an SSL/TLS certificate issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA).
- The secure mailing service seals the envelope and applies a special stamp that indicates that the letter is confidential. This is similar to how HTTPS encrypts the data exchanged between the client and the server using SSL/TLS.
- The secure mailing service sends the envelope to your friend through the regular mail system. This is similar to how HTTPS sends the data over the internet using the regular internet protocols.
- Your friend receives the envelope and opens it using a special key that only they have. This is similar to how the client (such as a web browser) uses the website’s public key to establish an encrypted connection with the server.
Overall, using a secure mailing service (HTTPS) is similar to using a secure protocol to encrypt and authenticate internet communication. Both methods provide an additional layer of security and privacy to protect the confidentiality of the communication.