TLS now supported with FTP

Our FTP servers now support TLS/SSL encryption of FTP passwords, adding more security to FTP.

Confusingly, there are a variety of different SSL/TLS encryption schemes for FTP offered by various FTP clients. The one we support is the most widespread, known as “explicit TLS encryption” of the FTP command channel. It’s defined in RFC 4217.

Encryption is supported by many popular FTP clients, including the FileZilla FTP client. (The quickest way to use it in FileZilla is to put ftpes://ftp.tigertech.net in the QuickConnect “Host” box, then accept the “Unknown certificate”.)

Is this the same as SFTP?

FTP with TLS encryption isn’t the same thing as SFTP, which we’ve supported for many years. SFTP works completely differently despite the similar name. If you’re already using SFTP, stick with that.

Are both the command and data channels encrypted?

Due to limitations of the FTP server software we use, we currently support encryption of the FTP command channel (which includes the password), but not the data channel (which includes the contents of files uploaded and downloaded). The data channel is less important than the command channel, but we hope to allow encryption of both in a future upgrade.