Secure File Transfer In the Era of Regulatory Compliance from Ipswitch

Data can exist in at least two different states. "Data-At-Rest" is the state data is in when in storage, on a server for example

or when it's being stored locally on your laptop. "Data-In-Transit" is the state data when it is in motion, being transferred,

for example, from your client laptop to a server or even from server to server. Both states, at-rest and in-transit, present

opportunities for security breaches. Data needs to be protected during both states. One way to protect data in either state

is to apply cryptography to the data in either state. Two well understood encrypted transfer protocols for protecting data

during the file transfer are Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol and Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. Additionally, OpenPGP

provides an additional level of protection for data-at-rest or data in storage. Many security experts recommend combining

(1) SSL or SSH protocol transfer encryption with (2) PGP file encryption to ensure that files are protected before, during and

after transfer. The combination of these provides overlap to ensure minimal risk of unauthorized disclosure of your sensitive

data during all phases of file transfer process. These encryption methods enable the secure transfer and storage of files and

data.

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SSL, also known as FTPS or "Secure FTP over SSL" can be used in conjunction with FTP to provide secure encryption over

standard FTP connections. The SSL protocol enables encrypting and decrypting of FTP sessions across networks to provide

authentication of credentials and secure private communications. When an FTP client makes an SSL connection with an FTP

server, all data sent to and from that server are encrypted using various strengths of complex mathematical algorithms.

Encryption algorithms make it difficult for attackers to read intercepted data. The recipient must have the corresponding

decryption key in order to read the file.