SSH, or Secure Shell, is a network protocol that's used to connect to a web server and conduct different tasks through a command line. The protocol is employed by many experienced users, for the reason that the information transmitted over it is encrypted, so it cannot be intercepted on the way by a 3rd party. SSH access could be employed for a variety of things based on the type of website hosting account. With a shared hosting account, for instance, SSH is one of the ways to import/export a database or to upload a file when the web server permits it. In case you have a virtual or a dedicated server, SSH could be used for just about anything - you could install software or restart certain services such as the web server or the database server which run on the machine. SSH is used mostly with UNIX-like Operating Systems, but there are clients that permit you to use the protocol if your personal computer is working with a different OS as well. The connection is created on TCP port 22 by default and the remote hosting server always listens for incoming connections on that port though a number of providers change it for security reasons.