diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala
index ccc37ebea..6302c35e4 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoost.scala
@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils
 import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory
 import org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD
 import org.apache.spark.{SparkContext, SparkParallelismTracker, TaskContext}
+import org.apache.spark.sql.SparkSession
 
 
 /**
@@ -174,6 +175,38 @@ object XGBoost extends Serializable {
     tracker
   }
 
+  /**
+   * Check to see if Spark expects SSL encryption (`spark.ssl.enabled` set to true).
+   * If so, throw an exception unless this safety measure has been explicitly overridden
+   * via conf `xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl`.
+   *
+   * @param sc  SparkContext for the training dataset.  When looking for the confs, this method
+   *            first checks for an active SparkSession.  If one is not available, it falls back
+   *            to this SparkContext.
+   */
+  private def validateSparkSslConf(sc: SparkContext): Unit = {
+    val (sparkSslEnabled: Boolean, xgboostSparkIgnoreSsl: Boolean) =
+      SparkSession.getActiveSession match {
+        case Some(ss) =>
+          (ss.conf.getOption("spark.ssl.enabled").getOrElse("false").toBoolean,
+            ss.conf.getOption("xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl").getOrElse("false").toBoolean)
+        case None =>
+          (sc.getConf.getBoolean("spark.ssl.enabled", false),
+            sc.getConf.getBoolean("xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl", false))
+      }
+    if (sparkSslEnabled) {
+      if (xgboostSparkIgnoreSsl) {
+        logger.warn(s"spark-xgboost is being run without encrypting data in transit!  " +
+          s"Spark Conf spark.ssl.enabled=true was overridden with xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl=true.")
+      } else {
+        throw new Exception("xgboost-spark found spark.ssl.enabled=true to encrypt data " +
+          "in transit, but xgboost-spark sends non-encrypted data over the wire for efficiency. " +
+          "To override this protection and still use xgboost-spark at your own risk, " +
+          "you can set the SparkSession conf to use xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl=true.")
+      }
+    }
+  }
+
   /**
    * @return A tuple of the booster and the metrics used to build training summary
    */
@@ -187,6 +220,7 @@ object XGBoost extends Serializable {
       eval: EvalTrait = null,
       useExternalMemory: Boolean = false,
       missing: Float = Float.NaN): (Booster, Map[String, Array[Float]]) = {
+    validateSparkSslConf(trainingData.context)
     if (params.contains("tree_method")) {
       require(params("tree_method") != "hist", "xgboost4j-spark does not support fast histogram" +
         " for now")
diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostConfigureSuite.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostConfigureSuite.scala
index 3b9eae707..fe16bcda5 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostConfigureSuite.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/test/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/XGBoostConfigureSuite.scala
@@ -47,4 +47,34 @@ class XGBoostConfigureSuite extends FunSuite with PerTest {
     val eval = new EvalError()
     assert(eval.eval(model._booster.predict(testDM, outPutMargin = true), testDM) < 0.1)
   }
+
+  test("Check for Spark encryption over-the-wire") {
+    val originalSslConfOpt = ss.conf.getOption("spark.ssl.enabled")
+    ss.conf.set("spark.ssl.enabled", true)
+
+    val paramMap = Map("eta" -> "1", "max_depth" -> "2", "silent" -> "1",
+      "objective" -> "binary:logistic", "num_round" -> 2, "num_workers" -> numWorkers)
+    val training = buildDataFrame(Classification.train)
+
+    withClue("xgboost-spark should throw an exception when spark.ssl.enabled = true but " +
+      "xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl != true") {
+      val thrown = intercept[Exception] {
+        new XGBoostClassifier(paramMap).fit(training)
+      }
+      assert(thrown.getMessage.contains("xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl") &&
+        thrown.getMessage.contains("spark.ssl.enabled"))
+    }
+
+    // Confirm that this check can be overridden.
+    ss.conf.set("xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl", true)
+    new XGBoostClassifier(paramMap).fit(training)
+
+    originalSslConfOpt match {
+      case None =>
+        ss.conf.unset("spark.ssl.enabled")
+      case Some(originalSslConf) =>
+        ss.conf.set("spark.ssl.enabled", originalSslConf)
+    }
+    ss.conf.unset("xgboost.spark.ignoreSsl")
+  }
 }