(HTTPs) A variant of HTTP used by Netscape for handling secure transactions. The Netscape Navigatorsupports a URLaccess method, "https", for connecting to HTTPservers using ssL. "https" is a unique protocol that issimply ssL underneath HTTP. You need to use "https://" for HTTP URLs with ssL, whereas you continue to use "http://" for HTTP URLs without ssL. The default "https" port number is 443, as assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. . (1995-01-16)