Many organizations that employ electronic data interchange (EDI) in their business-to-business (B2B) transactions exchange EDI messages through the Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) protocol. EDI communications carried out over AS2 are sometimes called AS2 EDI. Known for being secure, cost effective and reliable, AS2 EDI is commonly used in automobile and manufacturing supply chains. It’s also popular in healthcare, retail and e-commerce industries.

What is AS2 protocol?

AS2 or Applicability Statement 2 is a file transfer protocol that’s commonly used in business-to-business (B2B) data transfers. It’s based on the S/MIME and HTTP/S protocols. While you can theoretically use AS2 to transfer almost any type of file, it’s normally associated with electronic data interchange (EDI).

Overview

In an earlier quickstart guide to setting up an AS2 server, we featured a manual method for sending EDI messages. Because EDI transactions are best carried out automatically, we thought it would be a good idea to show you how to implement real-time transactions on the same solution we used in that post.

AS2 (applicability statement 2) uses public keys and private keys to encrypt files being transferred between IP addresses. With AS2, security, authentication, message integrity and privacy are ensured with encryption, digital certificates and nonrepudiation techniques. AS2 provides greater security for your EDI data than standard FTP, supporting synchronous and asynchronous MDN (message disposition notification) and digital signatures.

Plus, with JSCAPE's AS2 server you can send files regardless of file size and content type.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the basic steps for setting up an Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) server. While the final outcome will only be a rudimentary AS2 setup, the steps you’ll encounter along the way are crucial in understanding AS2 configuration concepts. That said, we’ll be sharing links to other AS2 tutorials as we move along. When you combine all these tutorials, you’ll be able to configure a server for production-grade AS2 workflows.

Overview: What Is AES?

First adopted by the U.S. government to protect classified information, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has long gained global acceptance and is used for securing sensitive data in various industries. In this post, we'll discuss AES encryption and explain its vital role in securing sensitive files sent over the Internet.

Overview: What is the AS2 file transfer protocol?

AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) is a file transfer protocol that enables organizations to conduct fully automated,server-to-server file transfers. You can use it to exchange business documents with one or more parties in a paper-free manner. AS2 can be used for exchanging digitized purchase orders, invoices, healthcare claims and other types of business documents. By exchanging these files through AS2, you can ensure message integrity, confidentiality and reliability.

AS2 is based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and incorporates Secure/Multipurpose Internet Email Extensions (S/MIME) for business-grade messaging. AS2’s built-in electronic receipt functionality, known as Message Disposition Notification (MDN), is a function of S/MIME. Since firewalls are normally configured to allow HTTP and HTTPS (HTTP secure) connections, you won’t have to apply any configuration changes to your firewall for AS2 to work.

The AS2 protocol can transfer almost any type of file over the Internet. However, it’s more closely associated with EDI messages. To get a good grasp of AS2, you need to understand what Electronic Data Interchange is first.

There are currently two ways of exchanging EDI documents. The first involves subscribing to a third party known as a Value Added Network (VAN), while the second involves using the AS2 protocol. Sure, there might be a few other less-known options, but these two are, by far, the most widely used. But which of these two options is best for your business? Let's examine some key considerations: Cost, interoperability, trading partner onboarding, and security and control.

When you request an electronic receipt a.k.a. Message Disposition Notification or MDN for your AS2 transmission from your trading partner, you can choose between two options: Sync MDN or Async MDN. In this post we'll show you how to use the latter.

In a previous post on automated AS2 file transfers, we showed you how to configure JSCAPE MFT Server so that it would monitor a directory for newly added files and then, each time a new file is detected, transmit that file to an AS2 trading partner. Today, we're going to try something different. We're going to set up JSCAPE MFT Server to carry out an AS2 transmission on a pre-defined schedule.

The AS2 protocol has no standard port per se. However, since it runs over HTTP or HTTPS, people who use AS2 also use the standard ports of those protocols by default.