SHTTP

SHTTP is a secure protocol used to encrypt and host sensitive information on the web. This is particularly important when dealing with financial and confidential information. Secure HTTP was developed by Enterprise Integration Technology (EIT) as part of the CommerceNet Project in Silicon Valley but has been released as a public specification. The system provides security enhancements to the Web transport standard, hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). It allows clients and server to negotiate independently encryption, authentication, and digital signature methods, in any combination, in both directions. It supports a variety of encryption, triple DES, and others. The use of SHTTP begins with an exchange of messages that specify security management information such as the encryption, hash, and signature algorithms to be used in each direction. Theses can be specified separately for header and content information.

SHTTP can provide confidentiality, authentication, integrity guarantees on an individual file basis. Web sites with security features are used when displaying information such as Credit card numbers, Personal information, passwords and Contact details. Security for Commerce on the Internet One of the main problems for retailing electronically on the Internet is the lack of security. Two general-purpose approaches that are broadly representative and probably the most important as well: the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) from Netscape and Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) from Enterprise Integration Technology. For payment systems that provide strong security for Internet purchases of goods and services two are Secure Electronic Transactions (SET), proposed for bankcard transactions by MasterCard and Visa or a more sophisticated payment particularly in anonymity, is E-cash developed by DigiCash.