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There are actually many ways to go about creating an SSL connection between servers, and the best one for your situation will depend upon the type of protocol you're planning to tunnel through it. As you probably know, the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) allows the use of encryption to protect data sent via a TCP/IP connection. The most commonly used implementation of SSL is the HTTPS protocol: a secure encrypted alternative to HTTP for transferring information over the Web.
The easiest way to create a secure connection between two servers is through the use of the secure shell command (ssh), which uses SSL to create a telnet-style connection between two servers. This technology is built into Linux/Unix deployments, and there are several free implementations available for Windows systems, including OpenSSH and PuTTY.
If you're building a custom application, you should find an SSL library for the programming environment you're using. SSL is extremely common and can be found for virtually any environment. I often use the Crypt::SSLeay Perl module for this purpose, although any standard SSL implementation that you're comfortable using in your environment will work.
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This was first published in May 2009
Security Management Strategies for the CIO
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