Introduction to Secure Shell

As Internet access becomes increasingly inexpensive and available, it has become a viable replacement for traditional couriers, telephone, and fax, as well as remote dial-up access to a company's internal computer resources.

One of the biggest challenges in using the Internet to replace more traditional communications is security. In the past, companies have maintained their own modem bank dial-up access to company resources so that critical data wasn't being transmitted over the public network. Modem banks are expensive to maintain and don't scale well. In a large company, long distance charges for road warriors alone can make this an expensive solution.

Secure Shell is a protocol that provides authentication, encryption and data integrity to secure network communications. Implementations of Secure Shell offer the following capabilities: a secure command-shell, secure file transfer, and remote access to a variety of TCP/IP applications via a secure tunnel. Secure Shell client and server applications are widely available for most popular operating systems.

Secure Shell offers a good solution for the problem of securing data sent over a public network. For example, using Secure Shell and the Internet for securely transferring documents and work products electronically, rather than using a traditional overnight courier can provide a substantial cost savings. Consider that the average shipping rate for a single overnight package is between $15 and $30. The average one month unlimited Internet access account in the U.S. costs about $14 a month and usually offers nationwide dial-up access. Using the Internet with Secure Shell to securely deliver your documents, you could easily recoup the cost of Internet access with just one document transfer.

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