SecureFTP

The FTP protocol provides a easy and straight forward protocol for transferring files between systems on different platforms and is one of the most used applications on a TCP/IP connected network. Many installations rely on it to efficiently transmit critical files that can contain vital information such as customer names, product ideas, credit card account numbers, personal names, addresses, social security numbers, confidential contracts, legally protected medical information, source code to computer software, corporate secrets, physical asset locations and other sensitive information. Many times the sender or receiver of the sensitive information may be unaware of the importance of it and the necessity to properly guarantee the integrity and privacy of the data being transmitted, and in some cases ignorant of legal liability for protecting the privacy and integrity of the information.  There is also a naïve belief that information is inherently secure and that our data is by default completely safe and secure. This is simply not true. The truth is that the FTP protocol transmits data without any authentication, privacy or integrity.

The FTP protocol requires one side to act as a client that issues commands to set up and control an independent data channel that is used to retrieve and store files between two systems. The only security provided is the use of a user ID and password during the initialization of the connection. All commands including the user ID and password are openly passed across the network and must often be stored in a file or job control, making them easily susceptible and open to abuse.    

SecureFTP provides user authentication, privacy and integrity by using RSA digitally signed certificates, DES encryption and SHA-1 secure hash functions. These cutting edge, industry standard cryptographic functions provide authentication, privacy and integrity for commands and data transmitted using the FTP protocol by implementing the SSL protocol for FTP clients and servers running on the VSE platform. SecureFTP implements both the SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 standards for security.

(SSL stands for the Secure Sockets Layer and TLS stands for the Transport Layer Security. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has officially renamed SSL to be TLS. It is compatible with SSL and contains significant enhancements.)

SecureFTP relies on a number of integrated components, including PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) for identification, RSA for key exchange algorithms, DES for data encryption, MD5 and SHA-1 for message hashing and HMAC for message authentication.  SecureFTP  for VSE implements numerous industry protocols including RFC2246 (Transport Layer Security), RFC1321 (MD5 message-digest algorithm), RFC2104 (HMAC) and RFC2459 (X.509v3 PKI certificates).  By using industry standard algorithms, you are assured of compatibility with a wide variety of  other vendors and platforms that also support Secure SSL enabled FTP servers and clients.