Transparent FTP Replacement with FTP-SFTP Conversion

Many large organizations are struggling with how to replace unsecured FTP-based file transfers in diverse, multi-platform network environments. For example, financial services and retail industries have over the years introduced thousands of ad-hoc and periodic FTP transfers for automating information processing in their internal systems. In many cases, file transfers involve complex scripts that are executed periodically, and interruptions to these mission-critical transfers can result in major costs. While the regulatory requirements and company security policies are becoming stricter, organizations are forced to set schedules for large-scale replacement of FTP with secure alternatives.

The EFT Expansion Pack for SSH Tectia Client and Server offer an innovative solution for effortless and highly cost-effective replacement of scripted FTP transfers in large and heterogeneous environments. FTP-SFTP Conversion functionality allows dynamic, on-the-fly conversion of FTP to SFTP, without requiring any changes to the existing scripts and applications that use FTP. 

 

 

* The Architecture of FTP-SFTP conversion

 

The FTP-SFTP Conversion module captures the FTP connection before the transfer starts, and transparently converts the FTP connection to SFTP. The connection is made to an SFTP server instead of an FTP server.

The greatest benefit of the FTP-SFTP Conversion module is that any existing client with FTP functionality can be used as before:

• Windows Explorer
• Browser-based FTP
• Command-line FTP tools
• FTP GUI applications
• Scripted, automated FTP
• Application-integrated FTP
  

SFTP API Integration - Protecting a Healthcare Application

In this scenario, SSH Tectia is used to secure file-transfer-based desktop application connections to a server. The transferred files contain healthcare-related information, which means that they must be encrypted while transmitted over the network, as required by the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

SSH Tectia Client with EFT Expansion Pack can be integrated into existing applications through the SFTP API. By providing a similar programming interface to FTP, it is straightforward to replace existing FTP API calls with the SFTP API of SSH Tectia. The API integration needs to be done only once, as the same application package can be deployed to all necessary desktops. 

 

* Protecting healthcare information 

 

The deployment and management of all SSH Tectia hosts can be centralized with SSH Tectia Manager. SSH Tectia scales up to thousands of users, which means that it can be used even in the largest customer environments. 

 

Secure File Transfer Integration with IBM z/OS

EFT Expansion Pack for SSH Tectia has been specifically designed to address the diverse file transfer needs of large enterprises. It provides tools to perform the most optimized way to directly and securely transfer files between distributed hosts (Unix, Linux, Windows) and IBM z/OS mainframes – in a one-step process. Required file format and codeset conversions when transferring files from non-mainframe servers to IBM z/OS are performed on the fly as the file is streamed to MVS dataset format. Checkpoint/restart can be applied for ensuring large files are transferred reliably.

Interactive end users are provided with user profiles that can be customized to meet the specific preferences of each function.  SSH Tectia Client with EFT Expansion Pack offers a variety of options for initiating file transfers from distributed hosts to IBM mainframes:

• Command-line tools
• Java and C APIs
• Windows graphical user interface with drag-and-drop file transfers

Regardless of the way the file transfers are initiated, SSH Tectia with EFT Expansion Pack transfers the file with SFTP in single step, directly to its desired MVS end format, and does not require any additional and costly processes to further convert and/or copy files through an intermediary storage area in z/OS.

 

 

* Direct streaming MVS dataset operations in heterogeneous platform and diverse user environment.