Secure Shell, also known as SSH, is a cryptographic network protocol that is used to execute commands on a remote machine or to exchange data between a website hosting server and a client. Due to the fact that the data exchanged by the two sides is encrypted, a third party simply cannot intercept it, which makes SSH a favored means of handling an Internet hosting account. The commands that could be executed depend on the type of hosting service. On a shared web server, for instance, the possibilities are limited as you'll not have root access to the web server, so you may just create/move/delete files, create and unpack archives, import and export databases, and so on. They are all actions that are performed inside the shared hosting account and don't require a higher level of access. Through a virtual or a dedicated server, you'll have the ability to set up server-side software or to restart the machine or just a specific service (web server, database server, etc.). SSH commands are submitted through a command line, but if you don't use a UNIX-like OS, there are a variety of apps for other OSs, that you can use to connect to the remote server as well.