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October 04, 2007

FTP vs FTPS vs SFTP

Lemme guess, you're not fluent in the alphabet soup lingo of file transfer.

Well, the truth is its confusion as hell! We've got FTP, FTPS (also called SSL), and SFTP (also called SSH). But here is a great article on the Delphi300.com website that compares the differences between them.

Here's the summary, but I definitely encourage you to check out the gory details....

* FTP -- File Transfer Protocol. Popular and fast way of moving files between a client and a server. The problem with FTP is that it's not secured by encryption, leaving files at risk of being compromised during transport.

* FTPS -- File Transfer Protocol over SSL. FTPS is an encrypted flavor of the FTP protocol (kind of like how HTTPS is an encrypted flavor of HTTP).

* SFTP -- SSH File Transfer Protocol. SFTP uses the Secure Shell (ie: SSH) protocol to encrypt all file transfer communications. SFTP is a bit more firewall friendly because it uses only 1 port and it's also a bit more secure than FTPS. SFTP is gaining steam as the most preferred method of secure file transfer, particularly in infrastructures that favor unix but SFTP is quickly gaining steam in Windows environments as well.

Now go read the full article for more details!

Posted by Hugh Garber at October 4, 2007 07:03 AM digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

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