Overview

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. 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. 

Of all file transfer services out there, perhaps the easiest is using HTTP/S as a file transfer service, aka a web file transfer service. That's because users don't have to install anything. They'll only need to upload or download files from your service for a web browser. If you're using JSCAPE MFT Server, setting up an HTTP/HTTPS file transfer service is easy as well.

JSCAPE is a managed file transfer protocol solution that supports any protocol and any platform. Fully scalable and flexible, JSCAPE's managed FTP server enables users to handle multiple protocols (FTPS, SFTP, AS2 and OFTP, as well as SSH and SSL/TLS) from a single server. This makes it possible to simplify enterprise file transfers, improve compliance with two-factor authentication

With JSCAPE, users can meet any enterprise file sharing needs, including HTTP file transfers. Let me show you how it's done.

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.

Not everyone using your web file transfer server needs to have a user account. There can be instances when it's perfectly fine for a user to just carry out an anonymous file upload. Meaning, that user doesn't have to login. This set up can be useful in cases where an outsider just needs to do a one-off upload. We'll show you how to enable that functionality on JSCAPE MFT Server.

Overview

How do you strengthen a server's user authentication system? Well, one solution would be to simply 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

PGP encryption can add another layer of protection to a trading partner file transfer already secured by FTPS. It can also provide data-at-rest encryption as soon as the file arrives at the other end. In this post, we'll show you how to set up a fully automated file transfer secured by OpenPGP and FTPS using JSCAPE MFT Server triggers.

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.

Because Microsoft Windows doesn't have a secure file transfer protocol server built in, here's a tutorial showing how to install one on it. 

The SFTP server we'll be using for this tutorial is JSCAPE MFT Server, a managed file transfer server that supports SFTP connections and several other file transfer protocols like FTP, FTPS, HTTP/S, WebDAV, AS2 and OFTP, as well as SSL and TLS.