SSH, which is an abbreviation for Secure Shell, is a network protocol that's used to exchange encoded data between a client and a hosting server, which makes it impossible for unauthorized parties to intercept any data. Many tech-savvy customers opt for SSH mainly because of the improved level of security. The connection is made and the commands are delivered through a command line. The accessible options depend on the type of hosting service - on a shared server, for example, files can be relocated or deleted, databases may be imported and exported, and archives could be set up or unpacked. On a virtual or a dedicated server, your choices are considerably more - the web server and the database server can be started/stopped/rebooted, server-side software can be installed and more. These things are not possible on a shared server, for the reason that full root access is needed and all the other customers on that server would be affected. Though SSH is employed predominantly with UNIX-like Operating Systems, there are SSH clients for other OSs too - Windows, Mac OS, and so on.