Website Hosting for Faculty

Why Things Have Changed

In the past, the security through obscurity model was utilized with the www.york.cuny.edu web-server. While even 15 years ago this was dangerous, today's ubiquity of broadband connections, laptop computers, and exponential increases in computing power necessitate changes in the way computing services are distributed.

Past connections to the web server were done using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP sends all information including USER, PASSWORD, and DATA in transit UNENCRYPTED (cleartext). Meaning that a malicious user(s) can capture your data and passwords and possibly masquerade as your user.

Security Today (Now)

For publishing web documents to your personal web space you will be using SFTP instead of the old FTP method. This tutorial provides instructions on what to do.

Today IT Services has implemented a Virtual Private Network or VPN security services to authenticate and establish computing credentials to the end user. In a nutshell, VPN allows the College's network to extend itself to wherever you are off campus, providing a secure connection between you and the College plus giving you access to campus computing resources.

The VPN connection will give you off-campus access to

• Your Computer
• eGrade
• Library Databases off campus
• SFTP access to update your faculty pages