Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption enables transmitting encrypted data across the network between an instance of SQL Server and a client application.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol for establishing a secure communication channel to prevent the interception of critical or sensitive information across the network and other Internet communications. SSL allows the client and the server to authenticate the identity of each other. After the participants are authenticated, SSL provides encrypted connections between them for secure message transmission.

The Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver provides an infrastructure to enable and disable the encryption on a particular connection based on the user specified connection properties and the server and client settings. The user can specify the certificate store location and password, a host name to be used to validate the certificate, and when to encrypt the communication channel.

The topics in this section describe how the Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver version supports SSL encryption, including new connection properties, and how you can configure the trust store at the client-side.