
TLS Explained
TLS Explained
What is TLS
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol method that handles the end-to-end encryption of data sent over the Internet.
TLS evolved from Secure Socket Layers (SSL) which was originally developed by Netscape Communications Corporation in 1994 to secure web sessions. SSL 1.0 was never publicly released, whilst SSL 2.0 was quickly replaced by SSL 3.0 on which TLS is based.
TLS is normally implemented on top of TCP in order to encrypt Application Layer protocols such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP and IMAP.

Out of Date Protocols
Various Browser clients have provided approximate deadlines for disabling TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 protocol:
The most common failing with insecure websites is that they run the two old Protocols TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1
Various Browser clients have provided approximate deadlines for disabling TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 protocol:
Browser Name | Date |
---|---|
Microsoft IE and Edge | First half of 2020 |
Mozilla Firefox | March 2020 |
Safari/Webkit | March 2020 |
Google Chrome | January 2020 |
Best practices outlined in RFC-7525 give reasons why it is discouraged to use protocol TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. PCI-DSS recommends users to switch from protocol TLS 1.0 and adopt protocol TLS 1.2+.
To comply with best practice and still be able to work with the majority of current devices you should be running TLS 1.2 (for older devices) and TLS 1.3 (for current devices).
Some customers worry, understandably about backwards compatibility. However the number of visits from browser devices running only TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 is now generally under 1.2% on many websites. Importantly the Javascript functionality on these older devices makes them inoperable with most current websites. These use technologies like AJAX and JQuery especially on menus, baskets and checkouts.
In our experience, when we are asked for data assessments on supporting old browsers like for example Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 10 we find that visits are extremely low and that few if ever convert to a sale.
References
- Modernizing TLS connections in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 : https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/10/15/modernizing-tls-edge-ie11/
- Removing Old Versions of TLS : https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/10/15/removing-old-versions-of-tls/
- Deprecation of Legacy TLS 1.0 and 1.1 Versions: https://webkit.org/blog/8462/deprecation-of-legacy-tls-1-0-and-1-1-versions/
- Modernizing Transport Security: https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/modernizing-transport-security.html
- Recommendations for Secure Use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS): https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7525
- SSL Labs Grade Change for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 Protocols: https://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/tls/basics/
- What is TLS & How Does it Work? | ISOC Internet Society: https://blog.qualys.com/ssllabs/2018/11/19/grade-change-for-tls-1-0-and-tls-1-1-protocols
