For today’s security tip, we talk about data-at-rest encryption. When your users upload files to your file transfer server, those files are usually stored in plaintext. The risk there is that, if an attacker somehow gains unauthorized access to that server, he or she could simply grab those files and then view their contents.

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.

In today’s security tip, we talk about including uppercase and lowercase characters in passwords. This is related to our previous video about using long passwords. Aside from using long passwords, you can further increase the number of possible password combinations by requiring your users to include uppercase AND lowercase characters.

Play this if you want to watch the video version

By default, JSCAPE MFT Server records domain logs in log files. While in most cases, this will do, some organizations prefer to record their logs in a database. In this article, we talk about the pros and cons of file-based and database-based logging and how to record files in a database in JSCAPE MFT Server.

It’s time for another MFT Security tip. Today, let’s talk about long passwords and why you would want to require your users to use them. To begin, let’s have a thought experiment. Let’s say, the alphabet only consists of two letters - A and B. Of course, we know there are 26 letters all in all, but for the purpose of this discussion, let’s just say there are only two.

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.

Last week, we published the blog post 'The Ultimate Guide To Hardening Your Secure File Transfer Server', where we shared several tips on how you could take advantage of the large selection of file transfer security features on JSCAPE MFT Server.

A lot of the companies who come to us for their managed file transfer (MFT) needs aren't first time MFT customers. Many of them have already acquired a solution from another vendor but then realized some of their newer requirements were no longer being met.

While inherently secure file transfer servers like JSCAPE MFT Server are packed with lots of security features, many of those features need to be activated first. In addition, some functions need to be configured and, in some cases, disabled, to ensure optimal protection. Unless you implement those changes, you won't be able to realize the full (security) potential of your secure file transfer server.

JSCAPE MFT Server users can easily look up a description of each trigger event type by simply clicking the question mark icon after selecting an event type at the start of a trigger creation process. However, if you're still starting out and just want a quick overview of every single event type available, that process can be very time consuming. You might want to check out the list below instead.