Ios 9.0.1: $http requests to server that supports TLS v1.2 with valid certificate result in CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed

Kind soul

After upgrade to latest XCode 7.0, cordova 5.3.3, ionic 1.1.0, and angular 1.4.6 the application is unable to communicate with the server that has valid SSL certificate and supports TLS v1.2 (verified with curl) on iOS 9.0.1.

I hate to disable security when I do not need to as described in another post http://forum.ionicframework.com/t/ios-9-content-loading-problem/29619/2.

The code is as follows

$http({method: 'POST',
            url: url,
            data: data,
            headers: headers,
            timeout: httpTimeoutMs}).success(successCallback).error(errorCallback);

The error reported is below

2015-09-29 17:26:17.709 MyApp[398:71156] CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed (-9824)
2015-09-29 17:26:17.713 MyApp[398:71177] NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9824)

Thank you and will be grateful for eternity for any option that keeps security intact,
Irena