On the server side, secure communications between client and server are provided by the combination of Web server and application server (such as IBM HTTP Server and WebSphere Application Server) and do not involve the toolkit. On the client side, however, the toolkit application's Java client has the toolkit as the lowest layer, just on top of the JVM, so it is up to the toolkit to provide a secure connection.

To provide secure communications between a Java client and the server, the toolkit uses the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) version 1.0.3. JSSE provides a framework and a 100 percent Pure Java implementation of the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. SSL and TLS include mechanisms to provide the following:

The CSClient service can be configured to provide any or all of these features.

To provide secure communications between client and server for a Java application, you must ensure the Web server and application server are configured correctly on the server side, and configure JSSE on the client side. JSSE must be configured properly for the CSClient service to work, although most of the configuration can be done through the toolkit configuration file (btt.xml).

Different vendors supply different implementations of JSSE 1.0.3, and the toolkit supports the IBM implementation. You can set the implementation you want to work with in the btt.xml file.