Many people purchasing  file transfer software may get overwhelmedwith the what seems like an endless amount of terms and abbreviations.  WS_FTP supports SSL and SSH transfers along with the leading security of a 256-bit AES Transport Encryption andSHA-512 File Integrity.  What does this all mean to you, the buyer?  Let’s go into a brief overview of the security offered within file transference.

If securely moving all types of files is your goal, it is beneficial to know all of the modes of security and which software will give you what you are looking for.  SSL is a type of security measurement that uses cryptography to provide endpoint authentication.  It stands for Secure Sockets Layer and had recently been replaced with the acronym of TLS(Transport Layer Security).  It involves three major steps which include peer negotiation for algorithm support, key exchange/authentication, and message authentication/symmetric cipher encryption.   SSH is another security measure which allows for secure tranfer of data over the Internet.  This is done by creating a secure channel between network devices.  It is used primarily on Linux or Unix systems which access shell accounts and use public-key chromatography to authenticate the remote computer.  Public-key chromatography  is secure because it uses asymmetric key algorithms, meaning the key used to encrypt a message is different then the key used to decrypt it.

AES Transport Encryption is a standard adopted by the U.S. government. The 256-bit refers to the capacity size.  This is only employed by a few software companies, WS_FTP has it.  There are also 128-bit and 192-bit.  The AES is trusted because it barely has any chance of security breach.  The only attacks on it have been side-channel attacks, meaning an extra source of information is gathered which can be exploited to break the system.  For a more in-depth look at AES click here.  Finally, quick look at SHA-512 File Integrity.  SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm) is simply a compilation of hash functions developed by the National Security Agent.  SHA-512 is part of the SHA-2 family which provides better security than that of SHA-1 and SHA-0.  For specifics, click here.