This post is older than a year. Consider some information might not be accurate anymore.
[What’s the difference between SSL, TLS, and HTTPS?](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/5126/whats-the-difference-between-ssl-tls-and-https?newreg=5a0d1d02fb244551b61b81d79f0f0753
Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communications security over a computer network. They use X.509 certificates and hence asymmetric cryptography to authenticate the counterparty with whom they are communicating, and to negotiate a symmetric session key. This session key is then used to encrypt data flowing between the parties.</blockquote> Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security, 2015-06-23
The important things:
- TLS is a cryptographic protocol
- It is used for encrypted communication
- For communication there are two parties involved.
If TLS, SSL or HTTPS is an essential part of your application or system and you have to guarantee the secure communication, it is wise to perform connection validation tests between you and your partners. The cause may be on your system or on your partner’s side. Either way, if you fail to communicate, it may result in a really big business problem.
Automated connection and handshake tests help you to detect that and you are able to keep tabs on the connectivity issue.
Example scenario: During a migration or release of a new application, no one noticed that the default version of TLS has been upgraded to v1.2 on the system. The partner side wasn’t able to handle the new TLS version and therefore no connection could be established. Without knowledge you have to find the issue. It is the application or network configuration? Nothing has changed? Panic!
To spare you this kind of situations you need tests where you can check that quickly. Furthermore you can compare the conditions and the results with each other. If you have to keep your system and application high-available, you also have a failover system or scenario. For continuous delivery it is a necessity!
Google’s nogotofail enables you to perform such kinds of test. Additionally it checks security issues and scenarios like MiTM (Man in the Middle attack).
