SSH to establish a secure FTP server under Windows

Windows provides some remote management features like using Windows PowerShell, ServerManager.exe, or a telnet server, but it does not provide native SSH (secure shell) or Secure FTP access.

However, the good news is that it is fairly easy to set up SSH and Secure FTP (SFTP) servers, allowing you to securely access command prompts and files for computer or remote server examples, including troubleshooting , repair, or transfer/share files as you walk out of the office. You can even decide to set it up as an SSH tunnel to make sure your Wi-Fi traffic is using hotspots.

While there are many SSH and SFTP servers to choose from, here we will discuss freeSSHd below. freeSSH is an SSH and Telnet server that supports normal shell or command line SSH access, SSH based SFTP access (using command line or GUI client), based on SSH tunnel (VPN-like functionality).

FreeSSH is easy to install via a typical Windows installer. Doing though make sure to create the above installation at the end because they require the encrypted private key.

Configuring the Server

Once you open freeSSHd below, you will find a system tray icon that you can click to open the server settings. If you don't have the private key SSH tab created during the installation process and click "New" key (). Otherwise, what you should do in order to get the server running is to create some users by clicking on the "user" tab.

To make your SSH server more secure, consider forcing users to authenticate, with their own password plus a private key, they must be configured in their client program when their PC is connected.

If you know that you will be connected remotely to the server - if it will always be from another office, there is a static IP, for example - you can also consider the remote IP address whitelist to improve server security. To do this, simply click on the “Host Limits” tab and enter the IP address.

If you plan to use SFTP connections to transfer files, click the SFTP tab and specify a default path for the user.

Test Server

After opening the SSH port on your firewall, you can test the server from the client program to connect to the PC on the same PC using the host address or IP address of the local host. You can use standard SSH and SFTP clients such as Putty, WinSCP or FileZilla.

Open Firewall

In order to get SSH port 22 from other computers you must open Windows Firewall or any other SSH server you may have installed a personal firewall to access. You may have been reminded about allowing or disabling access when you first run freeSSH. If not, you can't connect to other computers via SSH and double check the firewall settings.

If you plan to connect to the SSH server via the Internet, the router and network PC connection must be configured to allow access. In the router, you can use the virtual server or port forwarding settings to open the SSH port 22 and the IP address of the SSH server of the proactive PC host.