Which security protocol provides encrypted links over network or internet connections?

• A. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
• B. SSH
• C. TLS
• D. PPTP

Answer: (A)

The security concept being tested is how to create a protected, unreadable channel between two endpoints as data moves across a network. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) does just that: it negotiates a secure session between a client and a server, authenticates the endpoints (typically with certificates), and then uses encryption to protect the data in transit. This encrypted transport is what you rely on for protecting web traffic and other communications over the internet, ensuring confidentiality and integrity of the data as it travels.

TLS is the modern successor to SSL and serves the same purpose, just with newer, stronger security methods; in practice, TLS has largely replaced SSL, though many people still refer to it as SSL.

The other options represent different security goals: SSH is focused on securing remote login and command execution, not on general encrypted links between arbitrary network endpoints; PPTP is a VPN tunneling protocol that protects traffic by tunneling it through an encrypted tunnel, which is a broader form of secure transport but not the generic “encrypted link between endpoints” mechanism described by SSL/TLS.