Securing connections
Service Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) are cryptographic protocols that provide encryption between two endpoints, such as a calling application and the SQL Server. This is a form of "encryption in transit." This is a very important concept for companies that process payments. They have to adhere to PCI-DSS. SSL is the predecessor to TLS and supports the need to address vulnerabilities found with SSL, thus providing more secure cipher suites and algorithms. Microsoft's recommendation is to use TLS 1.2 encryption, which supports all releases of SQL Server (assuming that the latest service packs are installed) up to and including SQL Server 2019. The ultimate goal of using TLS is to establish a secure connection. This is done by SQL Server sending its TLS certificate to the client. The client must then validate its copy of the Certification Authority (CA) certificate. The CA is a trusted third party that is trusted by both the...