FTP Admin 101: Summary of Workshop

Sharetru, a leading provider of secure FTP file transfer services, recently conducted a webinar titled "Admin 101: Setting up Defaults, Users and Workspaces."

It was designed to give both novice and veteran administrators of Sharetru a better idea of just how powerful some of these features can be and how they can help you protect your business mission critical information from a wide range of digital threats in the modern environment.

Setting up Site Security

The webinar began with a discussion of the security hierarchy built into Sharetru, many layers of which are missing at other FTP providers. Multiple firewalls and hacker blacklists are at the top of the list, as they are the most immediate level of defense against external threats. These are managed by Sharetru for the protection of all its customers. The remaining security layers are controlled by each customer’s FTP site administrator(s).

The site default functionality that is built into Sharetru is designed to save administrators as much time as possible and to meet industry compliance obligations related to the security of data files while in transit and at rest. You set certain security provisions on a site-wide basis, meaning that every user account that you create for file transfer thereafter will automatically follow these same rules.

FTP site administrators first choose to allow or disallow each access protocol -- FTP, Explicit FTPS, Implicit FTPS, SFTP and HTTPS -- at the site level;  rules then apply to all users. Other default settings can lock files during upload and allow a file upload to be restarted if an Internet connection is dropped. More than anything, these defaults give administrators complete control over how the service works for their needs and preferences.

The next security layer is Country Access Settings. This allows administrators to allow, or more importantly disallow, login prompts from being granted to computer systems outside of countries where known business partners reside. This takes hacker prevention to another level, since most hack attempts originate outside the U.S., for example.

User Authentication

Once a login prompt is granted, user IP and protocol restrictions come next, followed by allowed usernames. The next layer of protection takes the form of a username and password or a username and SSH key. User authentication by password is often the first and only layer of security at other FTP hosting providers, whereas Sharetru has provided its customers with many more layers of protection and control.

Workspaces and Permissions

Finally, having met all the security requirements for a successful login, highly granular access permissions provide control over who has access to which files and folders on your secure FTP server.

The webinar touched on the concept of workspaces, which are folders with per-user permissions of visibility and the ability to upload, download or delete files. You might simply have one private workspace for each user or you might also create shared folders for two or more users (with different user permissions within the same folders, if desired). Users can therefore be added to a workspace based on their business role and the data files that they need to access, similar to their own position within the company in the first place.