What is SSH?

SSH is a method of sending data between two devices securely. Known by the full name of Secure Shell it means that data exchanges between two networked devices is secure. It was originally designed to be a secure replacement for other less secure remote shells such as Telnet. These had previously sent information (passwords etc) using just normal text and so could easily be intercepted. Secure shell is mainly used on Linux or Unix based systems and allows data to be sent privately over the internet.

Secure Shell or SSH works in two main ways. Firstly it gives authentication and encryption on any files that you send and secondly it provides compression on these same files. Both of these help you securely send data to another network.

SSH has come on leaps and bounds since it was first discovered back in 1995. The first version of SSH was developed by Tatu Ylonen at the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland. He decided to design something after his university network was compromised by individuals hacking into students passwords. The freeware version was first released in July 1995 and managed to gain over 20,000 in its first 6 months.

Now a days SSH protocol is even more widely used and can be found in software such as UNIX, Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac and Linux.

Reasons that you may need to use SSH include:

-          Replacing RSH to execute single commands on a remote host

-          Replacing Telnet and rlogin to log into a remote host

-          Copying files to a remote host from a local server

-          Alternative to FTP file transfer

-          Tunneling or forwarding a port

-          To securely have a remote server as a file-system on a local computer

These are just some of the reasons that you may have to use an SSH. Thankfully since its development in 1995 it has improved vastly with many more features for a variety of secure data sending reasons.

Sending data across the internet can be risky. Whether it is files, passwords or other data information you could be at risk from hacking attacks. Some of the ways that people hack are like checking for your password, reading your sensitive information, hijacking messages and emails, taking messages and modifying them and many other ways. Of course you must do everything you can to prevent and protect these attacks from happening to your data and by using SSH you can do just that!

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