The new and improved way to create
and manage SSH keys in EFT 2020

#34 TOP TIP for Globalscape EFT Server

By Sally Gates | Feb 13, 2020 | EFT, News, Technical, Top Tips

With the release of EFT 2020 comes an updated SSH key generator. This fixes a core problem with how the old one was set up.

EFT 2020’s key generator is much the same as the previous version’s. It still asks for the same information, is found in the same location and generates the same type of keys. The change is the default settings that are checked when creating a key. This previously had a pre-selected option that halted SFTP connections if someone wasn’t paying attention

Previously, the key generator automatically checked the option to ‘use this key pair as the default host key’ for a site. Meaning, if someone wasn’t sure what they were doing or wasn’t paying attention, it was very easy to change the public and private key used for sending to EFT.

After doing so, people would be unable to send to EFT via SFTP until either the key pair was changed back, or the new public key was imported by trading partners. The issue was then made more complicated because people often tried to change the key back, but didn’t have a record of the password set up for the private key. This meant there was no quick fix.

The new generator now gives three options, with the default being ‘Just create keypair’. If this was selected, the keypair would be created and you would need to specifically import it into EFT and associate it with an account or site. The other options create the keypair and either set it as the host key for a site or import it into the key manager ready to be associated with an account.