Encryptions Used in Internet

What sort of encryption is used on bank websites and e-commerce? In general, symmetric algorithms are faster, and require a shorter key length to be as secure as asymmetric algorithms. However, there is the problem of how to securely exchange keys. So most e-commerce solutions use an asymmetric algorithm to exchange symmetric keys and then use the symmetric keys to encrypt the actual data.

When visiting websites that have an HTTPS at the beginning, rather than HTTP, the S denotes secure. That means traffic between your browser and the web server is encrypted. This is usually done with either SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security). SSL, the older of the two technologies, was developed by Netscape. SSL and TLS are both asymmetric systems.