For higher level of security, you can use a secure FTP (SFTP) other than plain FTP to transfer files and data from computer to remote web server. To do that, you will need an FTP program, such as WinSCP, CuteFTP, FileZilla. I use FileZilla on my PC. It is free and easy to use. There are two ways you can connect to a server using FileZilla, via the Site Manager or Quick Connector. You can follow these steps to connect server using FileZilla.
A quick way to connect sever via SFTP is to use the FileZilla Quick connector. Firstly you need to find out your server IP address in cPanel or use your domain instead. Then type in your server IP in the Host, cPanel username and its password, use 22 as the port number, finally hit the Quickconnect button to connect your server via SFTP securely. You can refer to this tutorial to connect to server via secure FTP for more details.
Notes
- You can create extra FTP accounts in cPanel, but only the main FTP account, your cPanel username and password, has the SSH access to download and upload files via SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol.
- When the secure FTP connection established, you can see the IP address in the Host field changed to sftp://yourserverip, also at the top of FileZilla, you can see sftp://username@ip, at the bottom right corner, a small lock icon displays.
