Google Hates FTP
Chrome, pretty much everyone’s favourite browser right? Over the past couple of years, the folks at Chromium, the open source codebase behind Google Chrome have stepped up their war on unencrypted traffic. Famously highlighting expired, bad and self-signed certificates with glee and also defaulting to http over SSL wherever possible.
Pretty much everyone in the world agrees with these moves and overall unencrypted web traffic is way way down in numbers. But what about File Transfer Protocol (FTP)? Generally, things have moved the same way, but there’s still plenty of it kicking about in all it’s unencrypted glory.
Google have just released stable build 95 of the Chrome browser. Which finally puts the last nail in the coffin of dear old FTP. It’s been a slow death though, gradually being phased out with options to disable it and other FTP related features being available since version 72. However, 95 has removed the code entirely making it not possible.
Naturally there are alternatives, like an FTP client for retrieving files and listings from FTP sites like Cute FTP, WS_FTP, FileZilla and the like. Or, of course switching your customer base over to an encrypted connection like FTPS or SFTP.
Managed File Transfer (MFT) servers give the ability to seamlessly switch your user base from one protocol to the next, and with more and more tech firms turning their noses up at the unencrypted (it is 2021 after all!) it’ll be something those who already have MFT will be glad they have in their organisation.
If you’re still in the dark ages of FTP and need advice on what options you have, then contact HANDD to discuss your options on maturing your file transfers before another silicon valley giant condemns them back to the 1980s where they belong!
Get in touch to discuss at [email protected] or call us on +44 (0)845 643 4063.
Further Reading
Discover Why your organisation needs MFT and learn more in our free whitepaper A Tale of Three Breaches where we discuss three of the most notable data breaches in recent times, providing analysis into why they happened and how IT teams can prevent similar breaches in future.