History

• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that developed SSH also worked on a protocol for secure file transfer. The secure file transfer protocol was revised multiple times during development. The resultant protocol design was not the simple secure file transfer protocol they had planned, instead they created a file management system.
  
  

Secure Shell Protocol (SSH)

• Secure Shell (SSH) is a protocol that connects computers or devices via a secure channel. SSH, intended as a replacement for insecure data transfer protocols such as Telnet, encrypts information (unlike Telnet which stores passwords as unencrypted text data).
  
  

Advancements on Secure Copy (SCP)

• Secure Copy (SCP) could only handle data file transfers between your computer and a remote host. SFTP acts more like a direct file system administrator, allowing much more control over the management of remote files.
  
  

Ease of Use

• SFTP graphical user interface (GUI) clients are much easier to create compared to SCP clients. A graphical user interface is a visual interface for operating software. GUIs stop the need to code in command line prompts and offer a much easier user system. SFTP is not Unix specific, like SCP is, and is available for most platforms.
  
  

Differences with other file transfer protocols

• SFTP, unlike the file transfer protocol (FTP), allows timestamps to be used. Timestamps are date and time information about a file such as when it was created, and when it was modified. SCP and SFTP use the same SSH encryption though SCP is faster at transferring files. SFTP for security, requires packet confirmation when transferring data which slows the connection speed.