In this post I am going to discuss about Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and its functions. Why Secure file transfer protocol came into picture? Because we know that FTP is very old and wasn’t design with security in mind.
What is Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)?
SFTP was created as an expansion of FTP to add safety mechanism and the other name for SFTP is SSH file transfer protocol. SFTP has the benefit of being well known and familiar to users because already FTP was in use. It is because it utilises the same, or very comparable commands to FTP. And on the other hand, SFTP is much more secure, as it came from a safe network protocol. SFTP is also a protocol for transferring files using SSH secure information and controls that are being transfer between the server and the client.
History and Versions of SFTP:
SSH file transfer protocol specifically designed & developed by the IETF( Internet Engineering Task Force) to run over secure shell connections. Here internet drafts were created that successively revised the protocol into new versions. SFTP uses Version 3 as the baseline.
Different versions in SSH file transfer protocol are:
1. Version 0-2
2. Version 3
3. Version 4
4. Version 5
5. Version 6
Why SFTP came into picture?
FTP and SFTP are connection oriented protocols, they both use TCP for file transfer. File transfer protocol is having security issues and it was not design with the secure protocol. Some of the reasons why SFTP came into the picture.
1. The most serious security problem with FTP is that the transmission of authentication credentials is in clear text.
2. Username, Passwords, commands and data can be read by anyone (unencrypted).
SFTP has more detailed info than FTP and faster than FTP, also can resume interrupted file transfers. “Secsh” that was responsible for the development of the Secure Shell version 2 protocol
Some advantages of SFTP are
1. SFTP adds a security layer
2. Data is encrypted using secure shell
3. Authenticates the user and the server
4. Uses port 22
5. Data is not sent in plain text.
6. Two factor authentication.
SFTP is more secure that FTP and we recommend to use SFTP whenever possible. Keeping this in mind our Web Hosting is SFTP ready. By above info now you know what is SFTP and its working. If we miss out any info just comment in the section below. We will be happy to update.
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