When SFTP isn’t enough — signs you need an MFT solution

Words By Kyle Lapaglia
If SFTP is limiting your operations, consider a managed file transfer (MFT) solution for automation, protocol versatility and advanced security.
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For the past few decades, many organizations have used the secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) as their main file transfer solution. It’s more secure and less prone to connectivity issues than the archaic file transfer protocol (FTP). However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that SFTP is also starting to age and hit limitations. Companies struggle to meet today’s business needs and use cases with purely SFTP-based solutions.

In today’s interconnected and highly regulated business environments, file transfer solutions must fulfill numerous requirements. For instance, they have to be highly secure, automated, always available, regulatory compliant, interoperable and more.

To meet modern business needs using traditional file transfer tools like SFTP, organizations have to apply many customizations that only make their infrastructure more complex to use and maintain, and costly. To address this issue, proactive leaders have started shifting to MFT solutions. MFT solutions meet many modern business needs and use cases out of the box. In this post, we’ll discuss the key signs indicating when it’s time to seriously consider replacing your SFTP solution with MFT.

What is SFTP?

SFTP, also known as secure shell (SSH) file transfer protocol, empowers your organization to transfer files securely between devices and servers over different networks. It uses the SSH protocol, which bolsters additional security features through strong encryption and authentication methods, like a user ID and password, SSH keys or a combination of both to verify each user’s identity and protect your data from unauthorized access. Most SFTP solutions operate using a client-server model, where the SFTP client starts the transfer process while the server waits for requests.

When you transfer data, the SFTP client will perform a variety of tasks based on the shared files. The client can list directory contents, delete files and resume interrupted transfers. SFTP clients can perform various operations on remote files, like listing directory contents, deleting files and even resuming interrupted transfers. The SFTP client is a secure way to share data internally throughout your organization and externally to clients and customers, which makes it a preferred file transfer method for you to protect your sensitive files.

Advantages of SFTP

In addition to SFTP’s ability to protect your organization’s data from cybersecurity attacks as you share it, your business can use SFTP software to stay compliant with data security regulations, like Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). In addition to keeping your file transfer workflow compliant, SFTP can also help your organization:

  • Improve security: SFTP contains encryption algorithms and public key authentication, so your shared data is protected during transfer.
  • Boost collaboration: SFTP helps your organization complete fast and reliable data sharing over a secure connection, which can improve productivity and reduce the time and costs that occur when your team manually transfers files.
  • Control how data is shared: SFTP’s comprehensive logging and auditing capabilities make it easy for your business to track file transfer activities and maintain a detailed record of when and how data is shared internally and externally.
  • Maintain data integrity: SFTP’s use of encryption secures your data during its transfer and makes it unreadable to hackers and other unauthorized parties. It also deploys functions that keep your data from being altered before the intended receiver accesses it.

How secure is SFTP?

When compared to the FTP, SFTP is a more secure protocol that you can use to transfer files. If you properly implement its security features, use strong passwords and keep your software regularly updated, you’ll be taking advantage of the different ways SFTP can protect your organization’s transferred data.

What is an MFT solution?

An MFT solution is software that combines the convenience, security and cost-effectiveness of SFTP with automation. You can use this type of solution to transfer large amounts of data between different systems, applications, departments and businesses.The MFT solution will serve as your centralized hub that you can use to set up accounts, manage permissions, audit transfer history, schedule transfers and more.

Advantages of an MFT solution

When compared to SFTP, MFT offers elevated advantages across security, control, compliance, automation and scalability. MFT solutions have more comprehensive features that integrate with a variety of operating systems and make it easy for you to transfer files in a complex and large-scale manner. Some advantages of using an MFT solution include:

  • Stronger security features: MFT solutions include stronger security features like data-at-rest encryption, access control, multi-factor authentication and logging and reporting capabilities.
  • Easier control: You can use your MFT solution to easily monitor, track and control file transfers in its centralized platform.
  • Assured compliance: Not only can you use an MFT solution to help your organization stay compliant with regulatory requirements, but you can also automate compliance tasks like logging and reporting so that your teams won’t have to do so manually.
  • Automated transfers: In addition to automation for compliance-related tasks, you can automate file transfers and batch processing while integrating your MFT solution with other systems your organization uses, even cloud-based services.
  • Better scalability: MFT solutions are designed to scale with your business without sacrificing performance because they can handle higher volumes of data transfers when compared to SFTP solutions.

And the greatest advantage is that some MFT solutions, like JSCAPE by Redwood, support multiple file transfer protocols. For example, JSCAPE currently supports:

  • SFTP
  • FTP
  • FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS)
  • Applicability Statement 2 (AS2)
  • Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
  • Hypertext Transfer Protocol over SSL/TLS (HTTPS)
  • Odette File Transfer Protocol (OFTP)
  • Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)
  • Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV)
  • Accelerated File Transfer Protocol (AFTP)

How secure is an MFT solution?

MFT solutions tend to be more secure than FTP and SFTP solutions because of their advanced security features. These stronger security measures can help your organization lessen the risks of data breaches and cybersecurity incidents.

Common problems with SFTP

Although using SFTP has its advantages, you can still run into issues when trying to implement it into your organization’s workflows. Automation, integration, protocol support, data security and cloud-service capabilities are some common issues that arise when using SFTP.

Lack of built-in automation capabilities

Unfortunately, SFTP and other traditional file transfer tools don’t readily support automation. You need to write multiple complex scripts to automate these tools for various business processes. These scripts are hard to locate, manage, update and troubleshoot.

Limited integration possibilities

Not only do SFTP solutions lack automation support, but they also lack easy integration possibilities with your other systems. Integrating an SFTP solution with other IT systems is difficult, as these solutions lack integration capabilities. Again, you’d have to use scripts and job scheduling tools to combine these systems.

Inability to support other protocols

Unlike MFT solutions that support a variety of servers, an SFTP server can only support SFTP. You would have to deploy other file transfer servers to support other protocols. Managing multiple disparate servers can be a nightmare since different server applications have different system and configuration requirements. Each server would also require its own maintenance and support costs.

Weaker data transmission security

While SFTP can secure data in transit, the protocol has no provisions for securing the data at your endpoints. Hence, your data will still be vulnerable before and after the transfer. So, if your file transfers involve sensitive data, you must integrate your SFTP solution with appropriate security solutions, such as data-at-rest encryption tools. As we said earlier, script-based integration is tricky and prone to management and maintenance issues. Additionally, file transfer has been increasingly targeted by threat actors, and custom-scripted solutions and SFTP servers have more security vulnerabilities and are easier to exploit than off-the-shelf MFT with built-in security features.

Inability to work with cloud-based services

Traditional on-premises SFTP solutions cannot leverage cloud-based services. Even if you could find a cloud-based SFTP solution, it would still have many of the deficiencies we mentioned in the previous sections.

Which file transfer solution is best for your organization?

If you’re wondering if using an SFTP solution is enough for you, consider your organization’s file sharing needs. Evaluate factors like which security features you need, how much data you’ll be transferring and which network protocols you’ll be using to transfer your data.

SFTP

There are organizations that greatly benefit from using SFTP. You may want to consider using SFTP in your file sharing workflow if you want to:

  • Transfer files between devices and servers, workstations and other devices
  • Share data with employees throughout your organization
  • Exchange files with clients, vendors and partners
  • Adhere to data security regulations, like HIPAA, GDPR and PCI DSS
  • Protect files that contain sensitive information by using a more secure FTP
  • Improve collaboration through faster and more reliable features like file transfer resume and directory listing
  • Control data sharing with tracking, logging and auditing transfer activities
  • Maintain data integrity by verifying that files aren’t altered or corrupted when shared

  • WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning)

MFT solutions

Alternatively, your organization may benefit from using an MFT solution as it scales. MFT solutions have all the capabilities of a secure FTP server, plus more. You should take advantage of an MFT solution if your organization wants to:

  • Automate its file transfer process and reduce manual effort and human errors
  • Integrate with on-premises and cloud-based IT systems
  • Use a solution that supports a wide range of file transfer protocols
  • Minimize the likelihood of data breaches with data-in-transit and data-at-rest encryption
  • Improve system reliability with high availability and redundancy features
  • Handle large-scale data transfers between different systems, applications and departments
  • Manage granular configuration of user permissions and access control
  • Enable proactive monitoring for potential reliability, performance and cybersecurity issues

Winner: MFT solutions

Winner: MFT solutions MFT solutions, like JSCAPE, empower you to maximize the resources in your organization’s file sharing process. They provide better security, smarter deployment and more versatile integrations. With JSCAPE, your organization can quickly and securely transfer files on a variety of operating systems, like Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris.

Still not sure if you need an MFT software solution?

Every organization is unique, and it’s possible that the arguments we’ve made for replacing SFTP with MFT may not apply to your organization. Request a JSCAPE demo today to see if it’s worth shifting from your current SFTP solution.