Java 7 defaults to TLS 1.0, which can cause this error when that protocol is not accepted. I ran into this problem with a Tomcat application and a server that would not accept TLS 1.0 connections any longer. I added
-Dhttps.protocols=TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2
to the Java options and that fixed it. (Tomcat was running Java 7.)
I faced the same problem and solved it by adding:
System.setProperty(“https.protocols”, “TLSv1,TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2”);
before openConnection method.