Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A cipher suite, sometimes referred to as CipherSuite, is a named combination of authentication, encryption, and message authentication code (MAC) algorithms used to negotiate the security settings for a network connection using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) network protocol. The structure and use of the cipher suite concept is defined in the documents that define the protocol (RFC 5246 standard for TLS version 1.2). A reference for named cipher suites is provided in RFC 2434, the TLS Cipher Suite Registry.When a TLS connection is established, a handshaking, known as the TLS Handshake Protocol, occurs. Within this handshake, a client hello (ClientHello) and a server hello (ServerHello) message is passed. (RFC 5246, p. 37) First, the client sends a cipher suite list, a list of the cipher suites that it supports, in order of preference. Then the server replies with the cipher suite that it has selected from the client cipher suite list. (RFC 5246, p. 40)