FTPplanet.com Blog

« Are you Chromed? | Main | FTP in 2 minutes »

September 12, 2008

Using Secure FTP

Quick reminder for folks to switch over from unencrypted FTP client-server connections to secure connections over FTPS or SFTP protocols. FTPS is an SSL based alternative to FTP, it's basically a flavor of FTP that has built-in encryption. And SFTP is another fantastic alternate that's based on the secure-shell (SSH) protocol. Both SFTP and FTPS provide secure and encrypted communications and will serve to protect any file transfer over client-server connections.

Here's some good advice from e-Consultancy.com: "FTP isn't perfect; one of its biggest flaws is that usernames and passwords are sent in clear text. That means that every time you use your website's FTP server, there is the possibility that a hacker could intercept your username and password and gain access to your website."

And of course, their recommended solution: "Secure FTP (SFTP) is a file transfer protocol based on the Secure Shell protocol, and as its name suggests, it is designed to provide a more secure means to transfer files between computers. Because of this, I personally advise all my clients to ditch FTP and set up SFTP."

Posted by Hugh Garber at September 12, 2008 06:25 AM digg this add to del.icio.us add to My Web Furl this page

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ftpplanet.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/770

Comments

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: