web traffic security approaches

Web traffic security approaches,A number of approaches to providing Web security are possible. The various approaches that have been considered are similar in the services they provide and to some extent, in the mechanisms that they use, but they differ with respect to their scope of applicability and their relative location within the TCP/IP protocol stack.

Figure illustrates this difference. One way to provide Web security is to use IP Security . The advantage of using IPSec is that it is transparent to end users and applications and provides a general-purpose solution. Further, IPSec includes a filtering capability so that only selected traffic need incur the overhead of IPSec processing.
Another relatively general-purpose solution is to implement security just above TCP . The foremost example of this approach is the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and the follow-on Internet standard of SSL known as Transport Layer Security (TLS). At this level, there are two implementation choices. For full generality, SSL (or TLS) could be provided as part of the underlying protocol suite and therefore be transparent to applications. Alternatively, SSL can be embedded in specific packages. For example, Netscape and Microsoft Explorer browsers come equipped with SSL, and most Web servers have implemented the protocol.
Application-specific security services are embedded within the particular application.The advantage of this approach is that the service can be tailored to the specific needs of a given application. In the context of Web security, an important example of this approach is Secure Electronic Transaction (SET).