Automated SFTP file transfers are traditionally done through scripts, but there's a much easier way. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to automate SFTP file transfers without scripting a single line of code.

Overview: What Is AES?

First adopted by the U.S. government to protect classified information, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has long gained global acceptance and is used for securing sensitive data in various industries. In this post, we'll discuss AES encryption and explain its vital role in securing sensitive files sent over the Internet.

Most customers who use SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) for file transfer automation prefer to authenticate SFTP clients through SFTP keys instead of passwords. Given the numerous inquiries on how to set up and use SFTP public key authentication, we decided to publish how-to articles to help organizations that wish to implement this authentication method in their SFTP environment. This article will focus on setting up instructions for the command line.

Let's say you have trading partners who can only transfer files to you via SFTP. Incidentally, you also happen to have an account on Azure Blob Storage and you prefer to store those files there. You're probably thinking: How can I automatically copy files from my SFTP server to Azure Blob Storage? That's easy if you're using JSCAPE MFT Server. We'll show you one-on-one, if you request a free trial.

JSCAPE MFT Server makes it easy to strengthen secure file transfers with OpenPGP encryption and decryption. But before you can protect your files with this cryptography method, you need to create the necessary public/private key pairs. In this post, we'll introduce you to three ways of doing that.

An Overview of HMAC

Data integrity checks are vital to secure communications. They enable communicating parties to verify the integrity and authenticity of the messages they receive. In secure file transfer protocols like FTPS, SFTP, and HTTPS, data integrity/message authentication is usually achieved through a mechanism known as HMAC (Hash-based message authentication code). In this post, we explain what HMAC is, its basic inner workings, and how it secures data transfers.

When I first read about HSTS, my first reaction was, "What's this? A replacement for HTTPS? Considering the ubiquity of HTTPS, shouldn't we be working to improve it first instead of replacing it?" Turned out, my initial understanding of HTTP Strict Transport Security was off the mark.

As you scout for the most cost-effective way of transmitting files with your business units and trading partners, among the many file sharing solutions that will likely stand out are free FTP servers. Most of these software applications are already bundled (or readily available through repositories) in operating systems like Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, so they likely don't require additional costs ... or so it seems.

Overview

How do you strengthen a server's user authentication system? Well, one solution would be to add another authentication method. Most servers authenticate users through the usual username-password technique. If you can augment that with another method, you'll be able to make it more difficult for unauthorized users to break in. For servers whose users connect through Web browsers, one option would be something called client certificate authentication. Let's explore what this is.

Overview

People who use SSL/TLS to secure their online transactions/file transfers are mostly only familiar with two of its security functions: 1. That it can encrypt data in transit and 2. That it can enable clients to authenticate the server. They're likely not making use of another feature that can greatly enhance SSL security even more - client certificate authentication.

If you've been following our posts, you know that client certificate authentication has been the subject of our discussion lately. However, we've never been able to talk about how to enable it on the server side. This quick post will be all about that.