What is the difference between ftps and sftp

With a closed protocol, however, you would have to contact Dropbox and pay licensing fees for using their protocol. Every client machine already supports file transfer protocol! What is FTPS? What is SFTP? Which Protocol Should I Use? The interaction is binary and cannot be logged as-is for human reading. No server-to-server copy and recursive directory site elimination operations. SFTP connections can be authenticated using a user id and password to connect to the server.

With FTPS the usernames and passwords are also encrypted. The certificate is considered trusted if either the certificate was signed off by a known certificate authority CA , like Verisign, or if the certificate was self-signed by your partner and you have a copy of their public certificate in your trusted key store.

Recent Related Blogs. The two are very different from each other, although they both aim to serve the same purpose. SFTP uses a single channel to transmit and receive all the pertinent data, while FTPS uses another channel that is dynamically decided for the data. FTPS often had problems when passing through a firewall, as it did not know the port that was being used by the data, and failed to allow traffic through the port.

FTPS sends messages in a text format, allowing people to read logs and determine what happened during the session.

This is not possible with SFTP, as the messages are not in text, but in binary. As mentioned above, both can be used to achieve a secure connection for transferring files, but there are points to consider for each. This is because it uses the same, or very similar commands to FTP. There are a number of SFTP configuration "standards" which may lead to compatibility issues between software titles from different vendors. The protocol does not offer removal operations for the recursive directory in addition to a server-to-server copy.

SFTP does not make use of distinct data and command channels. Transfer within SFTP takes place through the means of a single connection through uniquely formatted packets. A data channel and command channel are used as two separate channels for facilitating exchanges on the FTPS protocol. Data encryption occurs through an encryption cipher which is mutually agreed upon. While the communications can be easily read, encryption happens on both command and data channels. FTPS also requires your connection to be authenticated with a certificate.

When these certificates are signed by a trusted certificate authority, this provides assurance that the client is connected to the requested server. Unlike FTPS, this protocol encrypts the credentials and files that are being transferred in binary so that they are unreadable.

On the other hand, SFTP uses a single connection between the client and the server and so it is more firewall-friendly. In other words, the transport mechanism is really what differentiates the two. With it, comes security concerns.