Note that "SFTP" has no single meaning. Depending on the client, it may mean "FTP encrypted with SSL" or "FTP with encryption extensions of one of a couple of types invented independently by FTP server authors over the years" or "SSH File Transfer Protocol" (which is actually the real meaning of the abbreviation, and was in use for several years before secure FTP began to be common).<p>Historically, people tried to convince folks to call it FTPS (for FTP over SSL, which is the most popular form of secured FTP), but that seems to have never taken off. Unfortunate, since SFTP means too many incompatible things.<p>It's stabilized somewhat in recent years, and usually clients will do the right thing--and the most common meaning of SFTP has come to be "FTP encrypted with SSL" (which is actually one of the weaker forms of security for FTP--but it's got some semblance of "standardization", and works in lots of clients and servers, so that makes it superior). And, of course, there is no RFC defining secure FTP, so it's a de facto "standard" which can lead to buggy implementations and a lot of finger pointing--server says client is wrong, client says server is wrong, user says "I give up" and uses FTP, instead.