In one of our previous posts, we talked about the importance of authenticating an SFTP host before logging into it and how to use the host's RSA key fingerprint to carry out the authentication. The same principle applies when you import a user's client key for public key authentication. If you'd like to walk through it with an expert, request a free trial.

Three common protocols still used in file transfer today are FTP, FTPS, and SFTP. While the acronyms for these protocols are similar, there are some key differences among them, in particular, how data is exchanged, the level of security provided, and firewall considerations. Learning these key differences can help you choose a secure file transfer protocol or troubleshoot common connection issues.

When a user uploads files via FTP/S, SFTP, HTTP/S, or any supported file transfer protocol to JSCAPE MFT Server, those files don't have to be stored on the same machine as that server. Instead, you can have those files redirected to a variety of network storage options like a remote SFTP service, Amazon S3, Dropbox and several others. In this post we're going to show you how to store uploaded files to a remote Windows SMB share.

Let's say you're trying to connect with a remote SFTP host, perhaps one of your own SFTP servers or one owned by one of your trading partners. While there are tools like nmap and netstat that you can use to test SFTP connectivity, you can also use JSCAPE MFT Monitor.

While the IT skills gap is sometimes exaggerated, there are some industries where the tech talent shortage is really a major issue. One of those industries is manufacturing. Despite growing adoption of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, analytics, robotics and automation, which are often perceived to eliminate jobs, manufacturers are actually faced with a widening skills gap. Meaning, there are actually more jobs to fill.

JSCAPE MFT Server's Network Storage module (formerly known as Reverse Proxy) allows you to utilize various remote services and storage solutions as additional storage for your managed file transfer server. This can come in handy when your MFT Server machine has limited storage capacity or if you simply want to store certain user files elsewhere. One of the supported services is SFTP. If you have an SFTP server with lots of free storage space and you want to use that as a network storage for your MFT Server, you should find this post useful.

Overview

An SFTP reverse proxy adds another layer of security to SFTP services. In addition to SFTP's ability to encrypt data in transit and provide 2-factor authentication, an SFTP reverse proxy brings in several other security-related benefits such as hiding user credentials and the identities of your internal servers. An SFTP reverse proxy can be easy to set up and this post will show you how.

Overview

In order to keep transactions secure, you and your trading partners likely use SFTP and other encrypted protocols for your automated data exchanges. In this post, I'd like to share a method that can reduce the steps you typically take in applying SFTP automation to certain business processes. Here, you'll learn how to gather remote host credentials into a single entity, which you can later on reuse every time you need to construct another automated process.

Overview

In this post, we'll discuss the algorithms in a typical SFTP server and explain their basic functions. We'll cover algorithms for key exchanges, ciphers, MACs, and compressions. After that, we'll dive into the JSCAPE MFT Server Manager Web GUI and show you where you can configure those SFTP algorithms.

Having a basic understanding of these algorithms and knowing where to configure them will enable you to strengthen your SFTP server's security or troubleshoot certain client connection issues.

Note: SFTP runs on SSH, and the algorithms you'll be setting are actually SSH algorithms.

Overview

This post is for those of you who want to dive right into the steps of setting up a SFTP server. I'm sure some of you have been resourceful enough to go through the documentation and sift through all the relevant pages in there. But for those who just want one place for it all, this is the article for you.

For this tutorial, I'll be using JSCAPE MFT Server, our managed FTP server that supports SSH FTP as well as a number of other secure file transfer protocols. Since this managed file transfer server is built from Java, it can run on different platforms, including Microsoft Windows (32 and 64 bit), Linux/UNIX, Solaris, AIX, IBM z/OS and Mac OS, with support for SSL and TSL.

If you want to follow this tutorial, you may download a free evaluation edition of JSCAPE MFT Server by clicking here.