The basic difference between HTTP and HTTPS protocols

HTTP is a short abbreviation of Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP offers set of rules and standards which govern how any information can be transmitted on the World Wide Web. HTTP provides standard rules for web browsers & servers to communicate. HTTP is an application layer network protocol which is built on top of TCP. HTTP uses Hypertext structured text which establishes the logical link between nodes containing text. It is also known as "stateless protocol" as each command is executed separately, without using reference of previous run command.

HTTPS is a short abbreviation of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. It is highly advanced and secure version of HTTP. It uses the port no. 443 for Data Communication. It allows the secure transactions by encrypting the entire communication with SSL. It is a combination of SSL/TLS protocol and HTTP. It provides encrypted and secure identification of a network server. HTTPS also allows you to create a secure encrypted connection between the server and the browser. It offers the bi-directional security of Data. This helps you to protect potentially sensitive information from being stolen. In HTTPS protocol SSL transactions are negotiated with the help of key-based encryption algorithm.

Differences between HTTP and HTTPS:

• In HTTP, URL begins with “http://” whereas URL starts with “https://”

• HTTP uses port number 80 for communication and HTTPS uses 443

• HTTP is considered to be unsecure and HTTPS is secure

• In HTTP, Encryption is absent and Encryption is present in HTTPS as discussed above

• HTTP does not require any certificates and HTTPS needs SSL/TLS Certificates