Definition:

SSL Accelerator 

A dedicated hardware device installed within a company’s IT infrastructure to control and accelerate the processes of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption and decryption. The effective offloading of SSL processing duties from data center servers to a specially designed device can free up bandwidth and improve overall server performance.

When organizations transmit data and communicate business-sensitive information across a network, security measures should be utilized to ensure the protection of that information. The use of SSL is one practice that companies can employ to send and receive data across secure channels. However, the encryption and decryption processes required by this practice often place a great deal of strain on servers. Utilizing a dedicated SSL accelerator can alleviate some of this processing burden from servers by handling the data translation, authentication and SSL certificate verification procedures required by this service. Certain SSL accelerators have the ability to process hundreds of transactions per second, which can substantially alleviate the amount of stress produced by the processing-intensive procedure. By offloading SSL translation and verification to a dedicated device, data center servers can focus on other network processes, improving the efficiency and performance of information delivery across the entire network.