The Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service

TLS APIs are often complex, leading to developer mistakes. In addition, even with well-written applications, security administrators lack control over how TLS is used on their machines and don’t have the ability to ensure applications follow best practices. Our solution is to provide a Secure Socket API that is integrated into the well-known POSIX sockets API. This is both simple for developers to use and allows system administrators to set device policy for TLS. In this article, we both explain and demonstrate how the Secure Socket API works.