SSH, which is an abbreviation for Secure Shell, is a network protocol that's used to transfer encoded information between a client and a website hosting server, making it impossible for unauthorized parties to intercept any information. Many tech-savvy clients prefer SSH mainly because of the higher security level. The connection is made and the commands are sent via a command line. The available options depend on the type of hosting service - on a shared server, for instance, files could be moved or deleted, databases may be imported and exported, and archives may be set up or unpacked. On a virtual or a dedicated server, the choices are considerably more - the web server and the database server can be started/stopped/rebooted, server-side software could be installed and more. These things are not possible on a shared server, due to the fact that full root access is required and all the other customers on that server would be affected. Although SSH is employed primarily with UNIX-like OSs, there are SSH clients for other OSs too - Windows, Mac OS, and so on.