Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

HyperText Transmission Protocol, Secure
     
         (HTTPS) A variant of {HTTP} used by {Netscape} for
        handling secure transactions.
     
        The {Netscape Navigator} supports a {URL} {access method},
        "https", for connecting to {HTTP} {server}s using {SSL}.
     
        "https" is a unique protocol that is simply {SSL} underneath
        {HTTP}.  You need to use "https://" for HTTP {URL}s 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}.
     
        {(http://www.netscape.com/info/security-doc.html)}.
     
        (1995-01-16)