Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
web encryption method similar to HTTPS
Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (S-HTTP) is an obsolete alternative to the HTTPS protocol for encrypting web communications carried over the Internet. It was developed by Eric Rescorla and Allan M. Schiffman at Enterprise Integration Technologies in 1994 and published in 1999 as RFC 2660. Netscape's dominance of the browser market led to HTTPS becoming the de facto method for securing web communications.
Comparison to HTTP over TLS (HTTPS)
S-HTTP encrypts only the served page data and submitted data like POST fields, leaving the initiation of the protocol unchanged. Because of this, S-HTTP could be used concurrently with HTTP (unsecured) on the same port, as the unencrypted header would determine whether the rest of the transmission is encrypted.
In contrast, HTTP over TLS wraps the entire communication within Transport Layer Security (TLS; formerly SSL), so the encryption starts before any protocol data is sent. This creates a name-based virtual hosting "chicken and egg" issue with determining which DNS name was intended for the request.
This means that HTTPS implementations without Server Name Indication (SNI) support require a separate IP address per DNS name, and all HTTPS implementations require a separate port (usually 443 vs. HTTP's standard 80) for unambiguous use of encryption (treated in most browsers as a separate URI scheme, https://).
As documented in RFC 2817, HTTP can also be secured by implementing HTTP/1.1 Upgrade headers and upgrading to TLS. Running HTTP over TLS negotiated in this way does not have the implications of HTTPS with regards to name-based virtual hosting (no extra IP addresses, ports, or URI space).
The public source identifies “Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol” as web encryption method similar to HTTPS. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Secure, Hypertext and Transfer.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q277919. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.