TLS termination proxy

A TLS termination proxy (or SSL termination proxy) is a proxy server that is used by an institution to handle incoming TLS connections, decrypting the TLS and passing on the unencrypted request to the institution's other servers (it is assumed that the institution's own network is secure so the user's session data does not need to be encrypted on that part of the link). TLS termination proxies are used to reduce the load on the main servers by offloading the cryptographic processing to another machine, and to support servers that do not support TLS, like Varnish.