Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a system that automatically encrypts information before sending it over the Internet and decrypts it at the other end before it is used. This protects sensitive information like credit card numbers while it is transmitted over the Internet.
Caching Proxy uses SSL to secure surrogate servers and to provide secure remote administration, as described in the following sections. SSL can also be used to protect connections to back-end servers (for example, content or application servers) as well as to protect communications between the proxy server and its clients.
For forward proxy, Caching Proxy supports SSL tunneling, which bypasses SSL and forwards the already-encrypted data without altering it.